


Shades of Grey

by imadetheline



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grant Ward Redemption, Hurt/Comfort, No Smut, Protective Grant Ward, Redemption, Skyeward - Freeform, Slow Burn, Team as Family, Understanding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 36,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27116518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imadetheline/pseuds/imadetheline
Summary: Skye doesn’t even try to hide her scoff, “You just can’t stop lying, can you?”His smile slips and she catches a glimpse of… some emotion she can’t place in his eyes, “I promised I’d never lie to you.”Skye wants to laugh at the absurdity of that statement, wants to point out that he betrayed them, that she shot him and left him for dead, that there’s so much between them that should make that a joke. But she meets his eyes and they’re almost painfully honest… and she can’t laugh. Maybe the old Skye would have. Maybe she still should. But this Skye… this Skye can’t find it in her. She just sighs and closes her eyes.*on hiatus but not abandoned*
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward
Comments: 142
Kudos: 84





	1. the only thing worse than a hater is a traitor

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I stopped watching this show after season three and then I just watched the framework arc. Ward is my favorite character and I just wasn't invested in the show anymore so I don't know anything about the later seasons
> 
> Also, this is a season 2 AU so it diverges after Ward leaves Kara with SHIELD but continues from then as if she and Ward hadn't had ulterior motives. So basically she rejoins SHIELD and he just disappears and they don't kidnap Bobbi. And then the show continues and the stuff with Skye's parents happens but there is no Lincoln in this AU. After all that SHIELD is basically just trying to wipe out HYDRA and none of the other stuff from the show happens. Oh and Skye doesn't change her name to Daisy. Again I haven't watched this show in a couple of years and I did minimal research so there are definitely inconsistencies. Please just roll with it. If you have questions about where stuff fits in please feel free to ask.
> 
> And you probably got this from the tags but this is a Grant Ward redemption story with eventual Skyeward. I understand the complaints about his character and their relationship but it was one of my favorites when I watched this show and I love exploring themes of redemption and forgiveness so if this isn't your cup of tea don't read it, just no hate please.
> 
> Parts of this were heavily inspired by Across the Board, a fic by Eienvine on fanfiction.net. Please go check that story out because it is perfection.
> 
> Chapter titles will probably be taken from songs in my skyeward playlist
> 
> With all that out of the way, I hope you enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Traitor by Daughtry

She’s starting to get annoyed. It’s been hours, as far as she can tell, and they’ve yet to even open the door. The complete darkness has gotten old fast, and she’s aching for a change in scenery. Even interrogation would be more interesting than this. She’s never been one for waiting. She’s already checked the door and all the walls, running her hands over them in the darkness to check for any weaknesses, but there’s nothing. Even worse, the individual bracelets fitted tightly and securely to each of her wrists have completely cut off her powers, and it’s been a while since she’s been without them. It’s unsettling, the loss of a sense. The vibrations that normally flow through her bones, feeding her information about her surroundings and people, are missing. And so, she’s stuck, waiting.

She slides down the wall to a sitting position on the rough cement ground and rests her head back on the bricks. She thinks maybe she’s underground. It’s certainly cold enough. 

The lack of information is driving her insane. Since she was little, information has always been essential. She’s a hacker, for god’s sake. So sitting here, with no knowledge of who shot her with a tranq gun on a supply run to get extra beer for their stash at the Playground of all things, is starting to add to her already pounding headache, an aftereffect of the drugs probably.

She tries to distract herself by closing her eyes and running through a list of who could want her and also knows that she’s Quake. Logically, it’s probably HYDRA. Because of course it would be. She rolls her eyes. Coulson and SHIELD have been focused on finding and destroying every last base with a single-minded obsession, and Quake had no small part in bringing most of them crumbling to the ground. Even sitting in the dark, anxiously awaiting who knows what, it’s a source of some pride that she’s considered enough of a threat to kidnap.

She opens her eyes, and the darkness is the same as with them closed. She sighs loudly, hoping it conveys her annoyance and impatience to the agents surely surveilling her, and rests a hand on the cold concrete. She pushes outward with her mind, hoping for the smallest of vibrations in return, a minor tremor… but nothing. She feels empty without them.

The chill of the dark room is starting to seep into her bones. She suppresses a shiver. She’s not sure how long she’s been here. Long enough for her to remember that when she was knocked out, she already hadn’t eaten for hours: too busy with the side investigation Coulson had saddled her with. 

They’d been having oddly good luck with finding and infiltrating HYDRA bases as of late, and if there’s one thing SHIELD is suspicious of, it’s good luck. And so, any free time Skye has managed to scrape together has been devoted to tracking patterns across their base raids and intel to find connections and assess whatever help they may or may not have been receiving. In Skye’s opinion, it’s rather a waste of her talents, especially with how short-staffed they already are. If someone is of the mind to help SHIELD, why not let them and deal with them when they become a problem. At least that’s Skye’s belief. But Coulson is the boss, so she spends hours with her computer, tracing and cataloging seemingly meaningless strands of data.

Her stomach cramps, distracting her from thoughts of their mysterious guardian angel and dragging her forcefully back to the anxiety of her current predicament. She’s cold and hungry but not yet as anxious as she would have been not even a year ago. May’s training is good for something it seems. She’s sure Coulson and the team are searching for her after she failed to return to the base. 

She knows sleep isn’t an option, not with her mind still swirling with information and possibilities. So she returns her palm to her lap, relieving it of the cold ground once she knows her powers aren’t miraculously coming back anytime soon. And she waits.

<<<>>>

She’s jerked suddenly from her almost-sleep by the screeching of the heavy metal door and the blinding light leeching in from the hall. She’s left blinking blearily and reminded for a moment of May yanking her out of bed at an ungodly hour to train, regardless of her pleas for five more minutes. That brief memory only serves to pull her completely out of her daze and into the present as five fully armed agents with guns firmly aimed at her head enter the cell. 

Her eyes now adjusted, she only glares at them and uses the newfound light to better examine her prison. Pure rock, except for the heavy metal door: just as she’d found from her investigation last night. Or was it last night? She isn’t sure anymore. She’s lost all sense of time.

She isn’t allowed much more time to gather herself before they’re hauling her up and handcuffing her hands together, separate from the power-restricting bracelets. She can’t help but roll her eyes at their inefficient use of technology. Fitz would have laughed them out of a job. She smiles faintly at the thought of the young scientist rambling on about the improvements that could have been made. It only earns her a shove from the agent on her left as they march down the hallway.

Her vision of the halls is mostly obscured by the large bodies surrounding her as they move as a unit. She’s not a completely useless spy though. She had noticed the HYDRA insignia on their uniforms when they entered her cell, confirming her hunch, and she’d cataloged most of the places they could be concealing weapons. At the briefest mention of a distraction, she’s fairly sure she can knick the poorly hidden knife on the belt of the agent in front of her. She just needs to wait.

She sighs internally. Why is she cursed with waiting? Impatience is one of her biggest faults. It’s almost like the universe is trying to teach her a lesson. She’s pretty sure there are better ways to teach it but then again, she’s not in charge of the universe, so what would she know?

They’re still winding down hallways, and by now she’s pretty sure they’re just doing it to try to disorient her. It’s probably working but she’s not going to admit that.

Disoriented or not, they end up at another identically looking, blank, metal door and she’s shoved roughly through it. The lights are most definitely on in this room, blindingly so, in sharp contrast to the complete darkness of her previous cell and the low lights of the halls. Skye has to blink rapidly to adjust to the light for the second time in ten minutes. They’re still too bright and her headache is returning in full force at the piercing light, but she keeps her eyes focused low to avoid them and sweeps the room for clues to their plans for her. Her hope for a distraction is gone but that doesn’t mean she won’t use all information available to her.

She takes in the chair bolted to the middle of the room and almost snorts as they shove her into it. She’d expected something a little more creative than classic interrogation and is disappointed, but not surprised, at HYDRA’s lack of imagination. 

In the back of her head, there’s a voice whispering that she’s never been truly interrogated and she’s in for a hell of a time but she pushes it even further back behind a veil of amused aloofness, trying her best to imitate May’s icy and intimidating demeanor. 

She’s also yet to see anyone in charge and though she was flattered by the number of guards they sent to accompany her, she’s offended that she’s not at least worth a boring monologue by the Bond villain running this operation.

She pushes all these thoughts from her head and focuses as one of the agents approaches. He’s set down his gun but he’s curling and uncurling his fists and she knows what’s coming next.

<<<>>>

She’s pretty sure they’ve succeeded in breaking at least one rib and scraping up her face, but that’s as far as they get before an alarm starts blaring from somewhere in the hallway. It’s muffled by the thick slab of metal that serves as a door but it’s loud enough for Skye’s liking. She’s really getting tired of this whole headache thing.

But it is serious enough to draw her guards away which is a good sign. She hopes it’s Coulson and the team. It would have been a great distraction half an hour ago, but as it is her hands are cuffed behind her, around the chair, and she’s unable to grab for any of the closest agent’s weapons as he turns and follows the others out of the room. 

She uses the opportunity anyway, to struggle in vain against the cuffs. When that only serves to aggravate her aching ribs, she strains her ears to listen for any signs of her team. The alarm is still blaring in time with the pounding in her skull, but she thinks she can just make out the sounds of a struggle somewhere down the hallway, which is good: it means they’re close.

She takes a deep breath, as deep as she can with the pressure on her abdomen, and tries to steady her nerves so she can help the team once they break her out of here. The alarm stops abruptly and she isn’t sure whether to be relieved or worried at the implications. At least her headache fades a bit.

The door in front of her screeches open again and she smiles, a comment about how long it took them to find her ready on her tongue. The sarcasm dies as soon as her view of the hall isn’t obscured by the bodies of the returning agents.

The bright lights aren’t enough to blind her of the sight of one Grant Ward, bloodied and bruised, being manhandled by four agents into another chair across the room. He even has the audacity to flash her a bloody smile as he’s tied down. Skye knows her shock is clearly written across her face but no amount of training had prepared her for this. The agents file out of the room, probably to clean up whatever mess that occurred, and she is left alone… with Grant Ward. 

She knows she’s staring, but she really cannot believe her luck: first, HYDRA, now, Ward. She opens her mouth to say something but quickly shuts it again. What is she even supposed to say? She takes in his appearance while her brain tries to catch up with her eyes. He’s clearly in worse shape than she is, but the all-black spy ensemble that she used to make fun of him for makes it hard to tell where he’s hurt, and, she reasons, even injured he could probably take her down in less than a minute. She really doesn’t want to test that.

The shock of seeing him for the first time in almost two years isn’t quite wearing off, it’s just that anger is quickly taking its place. The last time she’d seen him he’d helped them rescue Mike and Lincoln from, well… HYDRA, ironically enough, and then he left, leaving Kara with SHIELD. And of course, Kara is delightful and a close friend now, but Skye had thought she’d seen the last of Ward. There’s been no whisper of him since then. He’d completely dropped off the map. But here he is. Why does he keep popping up in her path? What has she done to deserve this?

She decides to ask him just that, or almost that before he starts trying to explain himself to her as he inevitably always does. “Why are you here?” she whisper-yells through gritted teeth, trying her best to glare him to death.

He only seems amused as he smirks through the blood painted across his features, “Well, the plan was to rescue you.”

Skye doesn’t even try to hide her scoff, “You just can’t stop lying, can you?”

His smile slips and she catches a glimpse of… some emotion she can’t place in his eyes, “I promised I’d never lie to you.”

Skye wants to laugh at the absurdity of that statement, wants to point out that he betrayed them, that she shot him and left him for dead, that there’s so much between them that should make that a joke. But she meets his eyes and they’re almost painfully honest… and she can’t laugh. Maybe the old Skye would have. Maybe she still should. But this Skye… this Skye can’t find it in her. She just sighs and closes her eyes. The situation with HYDRA seems to have shrunk in comparison to the situation that is Grant Ward sitting across from her. 

“Coulson sent me,” is all he says in response to her clear emotional turmoil.

She does some quick calculations, eyes still closed. She knows it isn’t wise to close her eyes, not in an enemy base with a highly trained super-spy literally sitting next to her, but she can’t look at him right now. She does find it odd that he’s here at all, especially after radio silence for over a year. And god knows they’re short-staffed at SHIELD as it is. And she knows he could have been out of those cuffs three minutes ago. She’s tired and cold and if working with Grant Ward means she escapes HYDRA and then never has to see him again, well she thinks she can manage that. Maybe.

She opens her eyes and takes a steadying breath, the iron of blood is sharp in the air, and tilts her head back down to meet Ward’s eyes. She nods.

He seems to release a breath he’d been holding, though it’s barely noticeable and she’s not sure why she remembers enough of his mannerisms to recognize it for what it is: relief, relief that she agreed to let him help her.

She hears the crack of his thumb as it dislocates and he slips his hand free from his cuffs. She suppresses a wince at the casual self-harm and finds herself glad that she wasn’t trained as a specialist. As he works on his other cuff she finds her mind floating back to that thought of her past self. 

Apparently, it had struck at some vulnerable place within her and her mind had latched on. Would her past self have approved? Of any of this? That self-righteous, certain, idealistic kid that she’d been before SHIELD, before this mess. She knows the answer, but she doesn’t want to admit it because that means that naive girl is dead, violently dismembered by the event of the past few years: finding her parents, her mom’s death… everything. They’d torn through her belief in black and white and left her with a muddling mass of grey. She’s seen enough. But everywhere she turns, there it is, that sickening grey.

Most recently she’s found it in Grant Ward’s eyes as he frees himself and glances at her before circling behind her to remove her cuffs. Grey, grey, grey. She misses the simplicity of black and white, of hate. The raging hate she felt when she shot him isn’t there anymore. Instead, it’s a steady thrum of quiet anger and distrust and exhaustion, but it doesn’t burn anymore.

Suddenly, her wrists are free… well, almost. She stands, rubbing at her sore wrists, but the power dampening bands are still there. She glances warily at him as he moves silently to the door, giving no clue as to what injuries he’s sustained. He shrugs apologetically and mouths, ‘couldn’t get them off,’ at her. She’s not quite sure she believes it but he hasn’t lied yet so she’s not going to push. Besides, if this is all a ploy she can just shoot him again once she gets her hands on a gun.

And so she joins him on the other side of the door and he nods, raising his hand and dropping, one after the other, three fingers. On zero she throws open the door and he surges out, grabbing for the nearest agent who falls without knowing what’s happened. The second drops almost as fast. She’s thrown violently back to a horribly similar situation but that time, that time they’d been… 

She shakes her head. She’s an actual agent now, with actual training. She’ll be damned if she doesn’t use it. It hasn’t been more than ten seconds since the door opened. She’s in the hall before the third agent has hit the ground. Ward is already moving to the next.

As a unit they move through the compound, dropping agents like they were made for it, and at least one of them was. Halfway down the hallway, Ward suddenly disappears into a door to her left and that confounded alarm slams through her head again, red flashes joining it from the lights in the hall. Skye has a brief moment of fear, waiting for an explosion or bullets in her torso, and she hates that his presence still does that to her… but there’s nothing, just the sound of bodies unceremoniously hitting the ground in the side room. 

She scans the hallway for any incoming agents and moves slowly towards the door. For some reason, the damned alarm is not drawing the agents to their position. She’s not going to question their luck for now. 

When she’s satisfied that for the moment there are no immediate HYDRA threats, she turns her attention to Ward. She swings into the side room and scans it with her gun, stolen off the body of an agent lying slumped against the wall ten feet back. It’s clearly a control room of some sort. The computers take up almost the whole room. There’s a body strewn across the floor and another slumped across a control panel. Ward is bent over near the bank of computers in the back, only the back of his head and his black shirt visible.

She doesn’t lower her gun, keeping it trained on Ward’s back and sweeps the length of the room with her eyes again. It seems he learned nothing from her violent admonishment last time he turned his back on her. Either that or he doesn’t care if she unloads a clip in his back again. She glances at the computers lining the walls and knows if they were anywhere else she would have a field day with them. As it is she just wants to get out of here. It’s been a rough two days if she had to guess at the time spent confined.

Still, she’s not sure why the alarm’s going off but they’re not being overrun by agents and she’d rather not be here when they do eventually figure out there are two escaped prisoners running around their base. Despite how much she hates to admit it, her best bet at a relatively safe escape is Ward. And so far, he’s been true to his word. It’s because of that, she tells herself, that she calls out his name softly instead of using the lull in immediate threats to try to slip away, or even harsher, to shoot him again.

“Ward?” He doesn’t respond. She tries again, one last time, before she takes her chances on her own, “Ward?” She can’t help the faint note of anxiety that slips out in the single syllable of his name. She’s tired and she’s not a specialist and agents could swarm through that door any moment and kill them both. She ignores that she included Ward in that last worry about both their lives. She’s not sure anyone outside of the team would have heard the anxiety in her voice, but then he was part of the team once, a long time ago. 

Nevertheless, he does seem to notice and he glances at her over his shoulder and smiles wearily. As attempts at reassurance go it’s pretty shit but she appreciates the attempt. And then he speaks, breaking the fragile silence, like a teacup shattering against the unforgiving ground, “Just setting the charges.”

Skye blinks. “Charges?”

It isn’t until he responds that she realizes she voiced her question aloud. She thinks she’s allowed some slack though, what with being kidnapped and all. “Yeah, I suggested it and Coulson agreed. He’s providing the distraction right now on the upper levels and I set the charges down here, get you out, and the whole base goes boom.”

Skye nods slowly. That makes sense. It makes a lot of sense actually. She’s just surprised and a little amused at the image of Ward suggesting something and Coulson begrudgingly agreeing that it’s a good idea. It also explains the alarm and lack of agents surrounding them, and it confirms her hunch that they’re underground. 

Before she can say anything Ward brushes past her and peers out the door, swiftly stepping into the hallway. He sweeps it twice with his gun and then gestures the all-clear at her. She bristles at his take-charge attitude but follows him out, gun raised, not in the mood for an argument.

They make their way into the upper levels without much resistance, just a few stray agents here and there that are dropped easily enough. It’s when they reach the ground level of the base that they find the chaos that usually follows Coulson and the team.

The hallway is filled with smoke and both Skye and Ward have to bring an arm up to cover their noses so they can even attempt breathing. They can hear gunfire and shouts up ahead with the occasional flashes of light piercing through the haze. 

Skye stumbles over what could be a body or a rock. It’s impossible to tell. But there’s a hand on her elbow steadying her and she almost says thanks reflexively before she recognizes who the hand belongs to and flinches out of his grasp. His face is mostly obscured by dust and smog and the arm across his nose but the hurt that flashes through his eyes is unmistakable even in the hell raining down around them. 

It’s gone in a millisecond though and he’s gesturing to a turn in the hallway, away from the worst of the fighting, as far as she can tell. The old her would have argued and tried to reach Coulson the quickest way possible, through the smoke and fighting if necessary. But this Skye realizes that this way the air is significantly more breathable and she’s all for that right now because her eyes and lungs are burning. So she raises her gun, as a precaution and a warning, and Ward nods, so she follows him.

She loses track of how many times the hall turns and how many agents Ward shoots before she’s even seen them through the thinning smoke. She’s pretty sure all that’s keeping her on her feet right now is adrenaline and she doesn’t want to think about it too much lest it abandons her.

Finally, they stop. Skye peers around Ward’s frame to see… a dead end. She’s about to try to yell at him around the ash in her throat but then Ward’s moving and she’s blind again. No, not blind. Just blinking in the light again. Goddamn it, that’s getting old real quick. But at least this time it’s sunlight. Guess that wasn’t a dead-end, she concedes, her vision is just blurring from in reaction to the smoke. She stumbles out the door, using the side of the building as a guide, and is relieved to feel the cold rush of fresh air on her sweaty, flushed cheeks. She’s sure she looks a mess but she can’t find it in her to care. Not when they’re in a deserted alley next to a HYDRA building that she’s been imprisoned in for at least the last 36 hours.

She only remembers Ward’s there when she blinks rapidly, trying to rid herself of the tears, and his blurry form clears in front of her. He reaches to steady her with a hand on her shoulder but seems to think better of it halfway there and his hand falls. “What… What was that?” she manages to croak out before launching into a coughing fit.

She hears Ward cough too before he responds, his voice scratchy, “Well if you mean… all the smoke I’d assume that was HYDRA… seeing as all the agents I took down in that hallway were wearing masks.” He pauses to catch his breath. “If you mean our exit,” he smiles roughly, “back door.”

She would have laughed at his casual tone if she hadn’t felt like that would cause her to hack up a lung. God, she’s delirious.

“I think your team’s heading this way. I’d clear the area with them if I were you. Don’t want to be here when the building goes up in smoke,” he says, still smiling, but she can tell he’s tired too. It’s almost comforting knowing the super-spy can still feel such a human emotion.

He turns to leave but she suddenly feels the urge to speak a question that’s been burning at the back of her mind, one of many, but this one feels important, and he stops in his tracks, “Why you?” She knows she doesn’t need to elaborate. He knows what she means. Why did Coulson call him of all people?

He looks back at her and his eyes are grey, grey, grey. He laughs and it’s brittle and if she breathes she feels like she’ll break it, break him. “I’m expendable.”

It twists something inside her to hear those words. She can’t identify it. She opens her mouth to say something, she doesn’t know what. And then Coulson’s calling her name and she turns and there he is and he’s wrapping her in his arms and she’s crying. And then May’s there and Kara, and Bobbi and Hunter are yelling from the street, and Fitz and Simmons are waiting in the van and she’s with her family. When she glances back at the alley Ward is gone and she’s left with only that sick twist in her stomach and even more shades of grey.


	2. take me back to the night we met, and then I can tell myself what the hell I'm supposed to do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She sighs. She can’t avoid it forever, no matter how hard she tries. Ward’s parting words have been bouncing around in the back of her head for the past two days and everyone on the base has been going out of their way to avoid mentioning anything about him which just makes it harder to ignore. The silence is so loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from The night we met by lord huron
> 
> I know nothing about hacking or computers so any talk of computer programs or anything like that in this chapter and all future chapters is completely made up. sorry about that
> 
> this is kinda a filler chapter so hopefully there'll be more action in the next one. I'm kinda winging this though so who knows
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Simmons insists on minimal activity for the week after the whole kidnapping thing. She wraps Skye’s ribs and stitches up a cut on her forehead, carefully avoiding any mention of a certain traitor. Skye doesn’t mind her silence on the matter, not when she’s not quite sure what she even thinks about the whole thing. 

Honestly, it was all kind of a blur. One second he was there and then he wasn’t and she didn’t know how to feel at the fact that he’d just saved her life. But she didn’t have to think about it for long because then Coulson was ushering her to the van and they were speeding away. Fitz had immediately begun work on the power-dampeners still encircling her wrists. She felt them drop away and her powers come flooding back in just as the van shook and would have swerved if anyone but May had been driving. 

She knew everyone could feel the aftereffects of the building collapsing a block behind them but she could feel it coursing through her bones. She’d almost toppled into Fitz with the force of it. Thirty-six hours without her powers and the first thing she felt was an enormous explosion, just her luck. The vibrations and aftershocks were ringing in her head and she could feel her bones aching. It didn’t help that the scientists’ pulses were racing, another vibration she did not need. She just wanted to sleep.

After that everything’s fuzzy. She knows she ended up in the medbay, and there are flashes of Simmons shining a light in her eyes, but then only more blissful darkness.

<<<>>>

That was four days ago. And the confinement is starting to get to her. She’s reminded again of her lack of patience. She can’t help it though, she’s bored. And she’s really trying her best not to be, because if she is then she has to think about… it. And she very much does not want to do that.

And so she’d thrown herself into her work. Well, the work she can do on the base that doesn’t involve strenuous activity, as she was quickly reminded by Simmons when she tried to distract herself in the gym. So it’s mostly hacking. She’d even approached Coulson’s assigned side project with renewed vigor but she’d quickly hit a dead end there. Someone is obviously helping them but she can’t yet trace the intel outside of SHIELD.

And everything else has been fairly quiet since the destruction of the HYDRA base she’d been held at. They know there are still a few left out there but from what they’ve gathered they’re probably out of the country and even though they’re slowly rebuilding trust, SHIELD is still having trouble nationally, let alone with the international community. So there’s not much for her to do, as Coulson has repeatedly told her.

So all in all, she’s losing it. She refreshes her computer for the third time in ten minutes, hoping the program she set up to filter through SHIELD files and intel has found something and it’s only the alert system that’s lagging. Surprise, surprise, there’s nothing. She groans loudly and flops backward on her bed. She winces as it pulls at her healing ribs. What she’d give to be able to smack a punching bag around right now. 

She sighs. She can’t avoid it forever, no matter how hard she tries. Ward’s parting words have been bouncing around in the back of her head for the past two days and everyone on the base has been going out of their way to avoid mentioning anything about him which just makes it harder to ignore. The silence is so loud. 

<<<>>>

She talked to Kara about him yesterday. She’s the only one who doesn’t immediately shut down at the mention of Ward’s name. In fact, she rather lit up, a wide smile breaking across her face when Skye found her eating alone in the lounge and used the opportunity to ask her about him. Kara had been happy to tell the story of Ward finding her and helping rehabilitate her of the brainwashing, smiling fondly, clearly lost in comforting memories. Skye’s heard the story before but the look on Kara’s face when she tells it… She can tell Kara misses him. She envies the simplicity in Kara’s view of Ward. She wasn’t there for the betrayal. She knows of it, yes, but it doesn’t seem to affect her view of him. How Skye wishes she could view him that way.

She hadn’t realized Kara had stopped talking, lost in her head until the silence crept in. She looked up and Kara was smiling softly at her. “He’s not a bad person, Skye. At least, he’s trying not to be.” Skye’s heard her say that before. 

“I believed that once too and then he turned around and betrayed all of us,” she replies, shaking her head and standing from the couch. She’s said that before too. They’ve had this discussion too many times over the years.

<<<>>>

Now, laying on her back, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Kara’s sad smile as she watched Skye turn and walk out of the lounge, something’s tugging at her. Was her response just a knee-jerk reaction to Kara’s statement, a line rehearsed in an almost-argument they’ve had before?

He had saved her. And he’d had every opportunity not to. He could have ignored Coulson’s phone call. He could have gotten into the base and told them of his connections to HYDRA and betrayed them once again. He could have shot her at any moment, especially when she was almost blind from the smoke filling the upper levels of the base. Looking back, it was hard to fathom why he hadn’t used the opportunity to take his revenge. She had shot him after all.

Maybe it’s all part of some bigger scheme that he needs her alive for. Even as she thinks them, the words ring false in her head. God, this is all too much. It’s all too tangled in her head, facts and emotions mixing and morphing from one moment to the next.

She sits up, rubbing at her eyes with her sleeve. She hates not understanding. She wants clear facts, neatly laid out, that lead to one right answer. It had been easy to hate him for being evil when he’d done nothing to prove her wrong. Now… Well, she doesn’t know. 

And she hates not knowing.

She sighs and pushes it all away, shoving it into a box in the back of her head. She’s probably never going to see him again anyway so she has all the time in the world to figure out how she feels about stupid Grant Ward.

She checks her computer one more time, resolving that she’ll go visit Fitz in the lab just to prevent herself from going insane. Although, she smiles fondly, Fitz might do that anyway by going on another hour-long explanation of some gadget or invention or other. 

She scans the information running across the screen, clicking through the intel her program had flagged for further investigation. Most of it’s nothing and she yawns, blinking around the weariness. 

She freezes, hand hovering over the keyboard, all exhaustion immediately zapped from her system. The cursor blinks steadily back at her as she rereads the data on the screen. And then she’s hopping off the bed, computer in hand and rushing out of her quarters and down the hall to Coulson’s office, uncaring of her messy hair and loose flannel.

Apparently, she’s not going to have all the time in the world to ignore the Ward situation after all.


	3. after all that we've been through, why do we have to be enemies?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We have an informant with the code name T1000," she says breathlessly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from enemies by lauv
> 
> not me with 2 chapters in one day  
> anyway this is pretty short but here you go

Coulson’s working peacefully at his desk when she bursts through the door and skids into his office in socked feet. He looks up at her sudden entrance, surprise and confusion written clearly across his face as he takes in her appearance and the wild look in her eyes. “Skye, what-”

She doesn’t have time for this. She cuts him off, “We have an informant with the code name T1000,” she says breathlessly. She looks at him pointedly, breathing hard from her sprint across the base. Apparently, her ribs are still not as healed as she’d like them to be.

He stares blankly at her, “I suppose. I don’t directly oversee every individual informant and source of intel so it’s possible. Why? Do you object to that code name? Because I’m sure we can change it if-”

“No, it’s not that.” God, he’s still not getting it. For the head of a spy organization, he sure can be dense sometimes. She’s going to have to spell this out for him. “T1000, you know, like I used to call Ward.”

His face goes from bewilderment to a blank mask in a quarter of a second and she can feel his pulse skip a beat in his constant vibrations. She almost regrets mentioning him. But this is important. She can’t afford to spare his feelings. Besides, he’s the one who asked her to look into this in the first place. She breathes in slowly to steady herself and walks to Coulson’s desk spinning her computer around so he can see the evidence of her words.

He glances down at the screen, but she can tell he’s not really looking. “It’s probably just a coincidence Skye. You’re still shaken from your kidnapping and he cooperated in helping us for the moment so it’s just clouding your judgment. It’s a common pop culture reference and I never even heard you call him that. Are you sure-”

She interrupts him for the third time in this godawful conversation, raising her voice, “My judgment is not clouded. You asked me to look into this! He helped rescue me and he knew where to plant the charges and where the back door to the base was. He obviously has intel on HYDRA and why would he so easily agree to help you guys save me if he was still working with them? It’s the most logical conclusion and you know it! You just don’t want to admit he could ever do anything good!” She’s breathing heavily again and as soon as she’s done her hand automatically starts fidgeting with the sleeve of her flannel, embarrassment starting to replace the offense she’d taken at his words. She’s sure half the base heard her. Coulson’s back to looking shocked.

He sighs, dropping his head into his hands. “Skye, I understand your frustrations but we can never be sure of his motivations and-” he holds up a hand without even looking up when she opens her mouth to interject. She slowly shuts it and he continues, “Besides, I hate to admit it but he’s very good at what he does. What makes you think he’d make it that obvious if it was something he knew you’d recognize?” He looks back up at her expectantly.

Well, that’s… that’s actually a reasonable question. She thinks for a moment, still pulling at the edges of her sleeve. She’s sure Coulson’s noticed by now. Finally, she speaks, “Well, he doesn’t know we’re looking into the intel, so normally I'd never see it. Not to mention he thinks we all hate him so he probably thought we’d never even consider that he could be helping us. Also, my program’s been running data for weeks so he’s certainly no slouch. And he may be good at what he does but I’m good at what I do, AC.”

He stands and rounds the desk, resting a hand on her shoulder, and nods, “I’ll put someone on it, but seeing as there aren’t any more HYDRA bases that we’re aware of in the states it’s going to be hard to tell if it is him, since there won't be as much HYDRA intel.”

“I could look into it if-” she starts, anxious to get to the bottom of this.

“No, you’re too close to this and besides I need you to rest, Skye, please.” He squeezes her shoulder lightly and she nods slowly. He smiles wider and releases her shoulder, heading for the door.

She’s left standing in front of his desk, computer in hand, as the sunlight pours through the fractal glass of the windows, scattering her shadow across the room, in an almost perfect representation of her thoughts. She blinks as Coulson’s vibrations fade away into the quiet thrumming of the base. She smiles. She’s never been one for rules and she’ll be damned if she isn’t going to figure out the enigma that is Grant Ward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kinda have vague ideas for more chapters but not quite sure how they all connect so we'll see when the next update is. thanks guys!


	4. I'm meaner than my demons, I'm bigger than these bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turns out figuring out Grant Ward is a bit harder than she had anticipated.
> 
> Six months later and the lack of new intel has led both Coulson’s official investigation and her secret one, to a screeching halt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from control by halsey
> 
> this is super short and there's no Ward. this chapter is more about Skye and her powers

She just wants this Ward business to be over with so she can shove him in a neatly labeled box in her head and move on with her life. Her feelings about him alternate mostly between anger and indifference and maybe a little bit of hope, but she needs to know what to feel about him, how to judge him, what the right answer is. She’s really starting to hate the color grey.

She shakes her head, clearing her mind, focusing on the sweat beginning to form on her brow, the quiet and comforting burn in her muscles, the steady thwack, thwack of her hands on the bag. She lets her thumping pulse fill her ears and ground her. It feels like a pulsing thread and she traces it, following it down from her heart to her toes where it joins the rumble of the earth. She follows the vibrations as they spread and branch out, weaving ever more complicated paths, until she can feel the pulse of everyone on the base, and the water trickling beneath the soil, and the pounding of feet miles away. She lets it wash over her and breathes in slowly. This… this connection, the interwoven threads of life, the pulse of the earth, it grounds her and… calls to her. She reaches for one of the pulsing threads as it dances before her. She wants to tug on it, lightly, just to see what it would do. Her fingers brush it softly.

And then her ears are filled with a different ringing, a sort of steady beeping. She’s angrily reminded of her alarm clock startling her from a pleasant dream. She wrenches open her eyes and blinks. Her hands are throbbing and the punching bag is leaking sand from a hole in its side. It trickles over her knuckles onto the concrete. Her mind conjures an image of an hourglass, every grain seems like a second lost. Some of the sand catches in her bleeding knuckles and she winces at the grains of time mixing with her blood. 

The beeping continues to fill the silence and she drags herself forcefully back to the present, enough to notice it’s coming from her watch. She scans the alert quickly and grins widely. Finally. 

She almost rushes out of the room before her gaze lands back on the mess she’d made in her sort-of trance. Her smile falls. She doesn’t have time for this, but her knuckles are still bleeding and the sand is everywhere. 

She uses the back of her hand to wipe away the sweat collecting on her face, pushing the few strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear in the same motion. She glares at the mess but reluctantly steps across the room for the first-aid kit they keep within easy reach. The number of accidents and injuries that happen in this room has made it a necessity. All she really wants to do though is sprint to her computer and double-check the newly-received information. Coulson’s probably heard about it too and she wants to be there when he decides what to do about it. But she can’t leave the mess here.

She quickly unwraps her hands and then immediately rewraps them in bandages. She rushes to the supply closet down the hall and rummages for a dustpan so she can get rid of the sand, which has slowed to a trickle but is still draining out the side of the ruined punching bag into an even bigger pile on the floor.

As she sweeps it up she remembers where she’d been before the alarm brought her crashing back to reality. She’s disappointed she hadn’t gotten to pull on that thread. She’d been so close. Although, in hindsight, it had probably been a good thing it had jolted her awake. Who knows what would have happened if she’d tugged on that thread while not fully aware of herself. Her powers are dangerous enough as it is. She’d followed her pulse before but she’d never been able to feel so many people or so much life. It was like she was the earth for a singular moment in between breaths. She berates herself for letting it get that far. She’s not going to lose herself to these powers. She controls them, not the other way around.

She empties the dustpan into the trashcan a few times and takes down the ruined punching bag, throwing it on top of all the sand in the trash. She doesn’t bother to search the base for another one, not right now, just hopes no one else had plans to use it anytime soon, and as soon as she’s satisfied with the state of the room she rushes out the door, forgetting her water bottle on the ground by the mats. In her haste, she doesn’t notice the hairline crack in the opposite wall of the gym, barely noticeable, but certainly not there before she’d entered the gym.

<<<>>>

Sure enough, when she hurriedly checks her computer it flashes back the same basic info her watch had conveyed: T1000 submitted new intel. It’s just a name, Ryan Davis, but it’s something. She does a quick search, fingers tapping away, and quickly finds that he’s an American tech billionaire currently living in Austria. She abandons that search for the moment and tries instead to trace where the intel was reported from. She’s able to narrow it down to Chicago. So Ward’s in Chicago. But that’s still too large a radius. It’s not like she can search the whole city to find him and demand answers before he books it. 

She sighs and leans back from the computer. This is still the closest she’s been since… well, forever. She rubs a hand over her face, the bandages around her knuckles scratching as they brush over her skin. Then she stands and closes her laptop, tucking it under her arm before she once again heads out her door, this time turning towards Coulson’s office.

She doesn’t bother knocking before she opens the door. She never does and anyway, he’s probably waiting for her. Sure enough, as soon as she walks through the door he speaks, “I’ve already dispatched an agent to Chicago to see if they can find him. I doubt they’ll be able to but I am trying Skye.”

She nods. She knows he is. This isn’t their main priority since he doesn’t seem to be a threat and they have bigger things to worry about. She knows he’s mostly doing this for her peace of mind. He seems to sense her thoughts because he adds, “I want answers too, Skye. You know I do. If this is him, I don’t know why he’s helping us any more than you do.” He smiles teasingly, “Should I be offended that you clearly ignored my order to leave this investigation to me?”

She smiles back easily, reminded that he’s more her father than Cal ever was, “Nothing personal, AC. I’m just curious by nature.”

He laughs loudly, “Boy, do I know it.” His smile falls the tiniest bit, “Did you find anything in his file?”

Her smile mirrors his, dropping into a small frown, “No, it all seems pretty normal.”

He laughs ruefully, “If I’ve learned anything it’s that nothing about Grant Ward is normal.”

“That’s for sure,” she chuckles softly. It fades quickly and the silence is comfortable but there’s something missing. She frowns again.

Coulson cuts into her musing as he stands and circles the desk, sitting on the edge of it “In the meantime, I want you to dig into that name he submitted. What was it?”

“Ryan Davis,” she supplies.

“Right, yes. Look into it and get back to me. And since I can’t seem to keep you out of it, you can join the official investigation.” She grins and he shakes his head at her obvious enthusiasm. “Just- Just try to keep it to yourself. There are people on the base who aren’t as willing to even consider that Ward could be helping us,” he gives her a pointed look. 

She just grins at him sheepishly. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You already told someone, didn’t you?” She nods apologetically, but the badly concealed smile undercuts her attempt at acting truly sorry. He sighs again and shakes his head, but there’s a smile creeping in. “Alright then, just keep it between you and Fitz.” She nods quickly, not even surprised that he guessed correctly. He is a spy after all. 

She leaves still smiling, with renewed determination in her quest to finally sort out Grant Ward. He never makes anything easy though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave comments they're my lifeblood. also I just made a skyeward sideblog, mostly to store reblogs of skyeward stuff I like but if you're interested in that follow me @heartisgoldandmyhandsarecold


	5. been waking up to a new year, got the past a million miles away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still, she just wants this Ward business to be over with so she can shove him in a neatly labeled box in her head and move on with her life. Her feelings about him alternate mostly between anger and indifference and maybe a little bit of hope but she needs to know what to feel about him, how to judge him, what the right answer is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from better days by onerepublic
> 
> this one's a bit longer and I really like it so I hope you enjoy :)

Turns out Ryan Davis has ties to HYDRA and has been funding some new top-secret bases in the US to replace the ones SHIELD had destroyed. And so another mission is sent out to eradicate one of the bases they found thanks to a combination of Skye’s hacking, and intel that included full schematics for one of Davis’ corporate buildings in Dallas. Skye isn’t even sure where Ward is getting this information.

Quake, of course, accompanies a team to the base. It isn’t even fully guarded and armed, still trying to rebuild its influence and resources in the US, so it’s fairly easy to infiltrate and bring down.

She returns from the mission, tired but satisfied, with dust still in her hair from the rubble of the base she’d brought down to cover their tracks. But upon seeing Coulson’s face when she steps down the cargo ramp of the BUS she knows Ward has evaded their attempts to find him in Chicago. She sighs.

<<<>>>

One year later

Skye fishes a coke out of the fridge in the lounge and flings herself onto the couch. Her leg muscles sigh in relief. She’s a fully trained specialist now but she still works out with May when she finds time and this morning May had not gone easy. Plus the constant stream of missions means she isn’t getting much downtime.

She takes a sip of the coke, uncaring of the freezing cold leeching off it and into her palm as she throws her head back and closes her eyes. 

They’ve had no success in tracking Ward down. To be honest, he’d kind of slipped her mind in the last few months. She’s been so busy but she finds she doesn’t think she has to constantly worry about him plotting against them. It’s a weight lifted that she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying since his betrayal. Huh, even the thought of his betrayal used to start a raging fire in the pit of her stomach. She only feels a spark this time.

Sure, when she’d started this she’d definitely thought that maybe he had some hidden agenda but now… It just seems like a very inefficient plan, if he is plotting something, and he’s anything but inefficient. Plus he’s had multiple occasions, almost too many to count, to kill almost all of them or just stand by and watch them die. And yet over the past year, he’s fed them information on almost all the new HYDRA bases popping up in the US. Sure, SHIELD’s own intel would have eventually picked them up, but Ward’s help has been invaluable in catching them before they can establish themselves and it’s saved countless agents’ lives, including hers. 

Still, she just wants this Ward business to be over with so she can shove him in a neatly labeled box in her head and move on with her life. Her feelings about him alternate mostly between anger and indifference and maybe a little bit of hope but she needs to know what to feel about him, how to judge him, what the right answer is.

If she’s being honest, and her honesty with herself has always been something she’s prided herself on so she feels she needs to be, her experience with her parents and the mess that had come of it has given her a different perspective on life. That had been the event that completely shattered her closely held belief in black and white, good and evil, SHIELD and HYDRA… her and Ward. 

She’d been taken in by her mother, had fought against her team: her true family. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t protested much when Ward had been dragged into her cell a year ago with only a bloody smile and his word that he’d been sent to rescue her. Maybe that had been why she argued so hard for looking into whether he was helping them. It was because a tiny part of her understood how he’d been taken in by Garrett. She’d done the same thing. 

She hasn’t forgiven him, she’s still angry, especially every time she thinks about what Fitz went through, but... But maybe she understands a little bit. Because --she breathes in deeply and realizes she’s crying-- she recognizes parts of herself in him. If she can be understood by those she holds closest, and forgiven, then maybe there’s the possibility that he can at least atone for some of his sins. He saved her life and maybe she’s prepared to try to understand, for her own peace of mind. It pains her to even admit the similarities between them, but they’ve been floating behind her eyes every time she sleeps. Maybe now that she’s acknowledged them they’ll stop.

She quickly opens her eyes as she senses footsteps from down the hall and uses the few extra seconds of warning afforded to her by her powers to swipe at her eyes as best she can to hide the tear tracks.

Kara rounds the corner and steps into the common area, immediately noticing Skye sitting on the old, stained couch. Obviously, Skye hadn’t done as good a job as she’d hoped with wiping away the tears because Kara hesitates before asking, “Do you mind if I-”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s no problem, go ahead,” Skye starts rambling but quickly cuts herself off. She appreciates that Kara doesn’t ask her if she’s sure it’s okay, just smiles and walks over to the kitchenette, and starts pulling out the waffle maker. Skye smiles a little, “Waffles? At 6 pm?” she questions.

Kara shoots her a grin over her shoulder, “There’s no better time.” Skye’s grin widens. Kara’s always so cheerful and her smiles are contagious. And she shares her love of breakfast food with… Ward. Her smile falls. Why does she remember that? And why had her mind gone there?

Skye blinks as the couch shifts under her and looks up to find Kara sitting next to her, body turned so she’s fully facing Skye. She smiles softly, almost sadly, “Is it about him?”

Skye blinks again, surprised. She’s not supposed to know… “I don’t know what-” 

Kara just gives her a look, “Fitz told me about it. He’s worried about you, says you’re not getting enough sleep. So… Is it about him?” She waits patiently for Skye’s response.

Skye sighs and closes her eyes again. Everything’s easier with her eyes closed. Kara’s pulse is slow and steady and Skye uses it to steady herself. “Yes. No. Yes and no.” She opens her eyes to glance at Kara but she’s still waiting kindly for Skye to finish saying whatever she needs to. Skye appreciates her quiet support, she really does. “I think… I think it started out about him, and it still is, but I think it’s about me too, just figuring things out, accepting parts of me I didn’t even know existed before.”

Kara reaches for her hand and takes the coke she hasn’t even realized she’s still holding and sets it aside. Then she takes Skye’s cold hand in both of her warm ones and smiles softly and Skye thinks maybe that’s another thing Ward’s done for her: introduced her to Kara. She says, “I’m proud of you, Skye,” and it’s so sincere Skye thinks she might cry again. Kara seems to realize this because she gently lowers Skye’s hand back to her lap and stands, moving gracefully back towards the kitchen, to allow Skye to compose herself again.

Skye breathes in and out a few times. She can hear the steady and deliberate movements of Kara as she mixes the batter and pours it into the waffle maker. Skye clears her throat of any remaining hoarseness and Kara smiles at her again. “He has that effect on people you know,” Kara throws out conversationally. 

Skye freezes, her hand closing around a handful of the fabric of her grey sweatpants. “What do you mean?”

Kara laughs and checks the temperature of the waffle slowly cooking under her careful supervision. “The desire for clarity and understanding. I think it’s because he’s still trying to understand himself, figure out who he’s been and who he is and who he wants to be. They’re all different people.” 

Of course Skye does know. She’s no stranger to the differences in who she’s been and who she is now. Hasn’t she been thinking these past months about all the different choices her past self would have made at every turn? She just hasn’t quite considered who she wants to be yet.

Kara continues, “I should know, right? I’m still trying to separate myself from the person I was under HYDRA.” She’s still smiling, her pulse jumps minutely but there’s no trace of the hurt that Skye would have expected to lace those words. For the first time, Skye thinks that maybe being cheerful isn’t Kara’s default but a part of the person she’s trying to become. Her respect and awe for her fellow SHIELD agent double instantly.

Kara takes the waffle out and puts it on a plate, quickly placing more batter in the machine with practiced skill. “He’s trying so hard to understand and find that person he wants to be and naturally people just start trying to understand themselves too.” She turns away from the cooking waffle and gestures to the one on the plate, “Do you want this waffle?”

Skye almost gets emotional whiplash from the sudden change in subject but manages to get out, “I don’t want to steal your dinner. Thank you though.”

Kara just shakes her head fondly, “I’m making enough for several people. I just leave them on the counter for people to grab when they have a break.”

Skye seriously doesn’t know how HYDRA even managed to brainwash an actual angel but she still shakes her head no and respectfully declines. She needs some time alone to process everything, especially what Kara’s said. She stands from the couch and brushes invisible dust off her pants before reaching for her half-drunk coke. On her way out the door, Kara calls out, “If you ever need any help with the search just let me know!” 

Skye smiles and calls out a “Will do!” before ducking into the hall, still smiling. She has a lot to think about and none of it is exactly helping her put Ward back in a tidy box. In fact, the boxes seem to be disintegrating at the edges as she realizes she can’t even put someone like Kara in a box… And maybe she herself doesn’t fit as cleanly into a box as she’d hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell I love Kara?


	6. and I'm still waking every morning but it's not with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She groans again and answers the phone without checking the caller ID, “What?” she mumbles grumpily, not bothering to stifle a yawn. Her headache is still pounding behind her temples and she tries to massage it with her hand as she sits up.
> 
> “Skye?”
> 
> She freezes and her hand falls from her forehead, eyes widening and sleep falling off her like a blanket. She’s wide awake as she responds, “Ward?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from colors by halsey
> 
> this one's quite long for me and we finally get some more Ward in this chapter yay! hope you guys like it!

A month after her conversation with Kara they get their first reports in a year of a dark, broad-shouldered man somewhere in Russia. This time it’s Coulson who finds her first and pulls her into his office. He looks haggard and there are dark rings under his eyes. The new HYDRA bases that are growing faster than they can stop them and the ever-growing anti-Inhuman militia groups are taking a toll on all of them but as director, he shoulders a heavy burden. She knows the military is on him for the threats to national security and they’re still trying to grow their ranks, with new recruits coming in every day. 

So when he tells her that Ward, who’s helping them, is the least of their worries and that he’s closing the investigation into him, she doesn’t argue. He smiles wearily and she knows he thought she was going to fight him on this, but she likes to think she’s matured over the last few years and she knows when to pick her battles. 

She leaves his office a little dismayed, but he never said she couldn’t keep tabs on Ward. So she sets up a system to alert her whenever there’s mention of him. And so life creeps ever on. She still receives intel from him about a wide range of threats and every few weeks she’ll get a notice that someone matching his description has popped up. The locations range from all across Asia and Europe, and once in Australia, but never in the US, probably due to his remaining status as a wanted fugitive.

Sometimes when she’s bored or between missions she’ll bring up the latest intel on his location and hack into traffic cams, private security, any cameras she can get her hands on in the area, and see if she can find him. Of course, he’s too good to be caught on security footage if he doesn’t want to be, but sometimes he’ll pop up and flash a cocky smile at a camera, and she’ll roll her eyes and close the computer, smiling just a bit. 

Sometimes there are reports of HYDRA bases they hadn’t even known about going up in flames in locations Ward had been spotted in a few days before. Other times it’s huge companies that report robberies of money or experimental tech days after he winks at a traffic cam in the surrounding area. She shakes her head almost fondly at those. Somehow it’s almost comforting. He’s still as much a criminal as he ever was, though perhaps a different sort. She’s not sure when she stopped distrusting him but she finds she doesn’t anymore, despite his more illicit dealings.

She starts looking into the unfortunate companies after he makes off with a quarter of all their revenues, and she can’t say she’s mad at him for it after she sees how little their employees make and the horrible conditions they work in. She doesn’t mind admitting to herself that she thinks that some of the corporations in the US could use getting similarly knocked down a peg.

It seems he’s doing fine for himself, and even though she wants to understand him, wants some kind of closure, after her conversation with Kara and a lot of self-reflection, she’s abandoned trying to categorize him. It’s finally sunk in that maybe people don’t fit into her long-held belief in good and evil. And if he’s happy with the life he’s living who is she to upset the balance for the sake of her own peace of mind. So she keeps an eye on his movements but she doesn’t make any move to contact or stop him. She hardly has the time anyway.

<<<>>>

Six months later

She laughs loudly at Jemma’s impersonation of Selena Gomez as Quake. It mostly consists of a lot of bad singing of Come & Get It while mimicking Quake blasting imaginary bad guys with her hands. Fitz is having trouble breathing as he doubles over on the couch, laughing and hiding his red face in his hands. Jemma’s laughing now too in between very off-key notes before she give up altogether to sink onto the couch next to Fitz.

Skye had felt like she wasn’t seeing her favorite scientific duo as much so she’d instated a game night in the lounge for whenever they were all on the base together, just to make sure they still made time to see each other. Sometimes, Kara or Hunter will join in if they’re free. Or May and Bobbi will sit at the table in the kitchen and make bets on who’s going to lose that night’s game of monopoly. It’s usually Jemma. When there are more people, Cards Against Humanity is popular, and it quickly gets very interesting, especially when they can convince May to play. She somehow always wins.

But when it’s just the three of them their favorite is charades, but not just any charades. Quake has gotten very popular on the internet, much to Skye’s embarrassment, and there are countless message boards and forums debating her identity. They range from normally weird, like a celebrity, to insanely weird, like one person who thinks she’s a lizard person in a human suit. But for their game, one of them skims through the boards, finds the weirdest guess at Quake’s identity they can and then acts like that person as Quake until the other two can figure it out. They always end the night laughing and holding their aching rib cages. And Skye can’t help but look at the two of them and be reminded of how lucky she is to have met them.

Tonight it’s late and there’s a pile of empty beer bottles by the end of the couch. They’re more than a bit tipsy by the time Simmons calls it a night and grabs Fitz’s hand, dragging him back to their room, both of them laughing all the way. Skye just waves goodnight and smiles, shaking her head fondly. She’s glad they’d finally figured out what they are to each other about a year ago. She can’t imagine anyone being as perfect for someone as they are for each other. 

She cleans up the empty beer bottles and flips off the light in the lounge, casting the room into darkness before she steps out into the dimly lit hallway. She makes her way towards her room in the almost darkness. She knows the base so well she could find her room with her eyes closed if she needed to. She reaches a hand out to the cold cement wall to her left, steadying herself, and closes her eyes as she walks, letting the vibrations under her feet and fingertips ground her.

She finally reaches her door and stumbles inside, kicking off her boots and pulling off her shirt as she closes the door with her hip. Her exhaustion quickly catches up with her and she resolves to take a shower the next morning instead. Her hair is shorter now (she cut it a few months ago), so she’s not as worried about it. She doesn’t bother with turning on the light as she fumbles for the sleep shirt she knows is strewn on her bed. She slips into it and quickly changes into sweatpants before falling onto her bed. She’s out before she can finish pulling the covers over herself.

<<<>>>

She’s pulled roughly from sleep by a loud ringing noise. She groans as a headache immediately makes itself known in her temples and she reaches out blindly for her alarm clock, smacking it roughly and letting her hand fall before she realizes the ringing hasn’t stopped. She grumbles and wrenches her eyes open, blinking blearily, and fumbles for her phone on her bedside table. She’s going to murder whoever’s waking her up on her day off at -she checks the time on her alarm clock- 5:53 am. 

She groans again and answers the phone without checking the caller ID, “What?” she mumbles grumpily, not bothering to stifle a yawn. Her headache is still pounding behind her temples and she tries to massage it with her hand as she sits up.

“Skye?”

She freezes and her hand falls from her forehead, eyes widening and sleep falling off her like a blanket. She’s wide awake as she responds, “Ward? What are you-”

He immediately cuts her off and she would have rolled her eyes if she hadn’t been in shock from hearing his voice for the first time in a year. It’s like nothing has changed and he’s still her annoyed SO. Except, she reminds herself, that everything has changed. “Skye, do you know where Simmons is?”

She slides out from beneath her covers and stands, sensing he’s not joking around. He never sounds agitated, always the picture of practiced calm, but he does sound urgent, so she answers, “Well, not exactly. She’s on the base, but I-”

Again he cuts her off, “You need to find her now.”

She hesitates for a moment, but his tone brooks no argument and she doesn’t think he’s trying to trick her, so she just says, “Ok,” and doesn’t bother changing out of her sleep clothes before she’s pulling open her door and stepping into the hallway, barefoot and hair tangled.

The lights are bright and she has to blink a few times before her eyes adjust, but then she’s walking purposefully down the hallway towards Jemma and Fitz’s quarters, ignoring her headache and the concerned glances from a few of the agents she passes. She knows she looks like hell, but she ignores it. She wants answers. “Mind explaining why I’m looking for Jemma before six in the morning?”

She hears him sigh but he answers and that’s almost more than she expected. He’s clearly in spy mode and it’s all business when he replies “I just learned there’s a rogue Inhuman inside SHIELD and they’re after Simmons, right now. There wasn’t time to submit it through the normal channels.”

She takes that information in stride and pauses. She lowers the phone from her ears and stops a passing agent, she thinks his name is Collin, and tells him to alert Coulson of an intruder and then shut down the base as calmly and discreetly as possible so the intruder doesn’t realize SHIELD is onto them. He nods and she pulls the phone back up to her ear as she hurries down the hall. She wrenches open the door to Jemma’s quarters but neither she nor Fitz is there. “She’s not in her room,” she relays to Ward over the phone still clasped tightly in her hand. She doesn’t even know why she’s keeping him updated.

He’s quick to respond, “Ok, where else would she be? The lab?” 

“Yeah, ok,” she agrees and takes off running towards the lab. She’s a little insulted he was able to guess their next most likely location before her when he hasn’t even seen Jemma in four years. But then he’s always been good at thinking on his feet and she may be an agent but her head is still pounding and she can feel her pulse spiking as she rounds a corner almost bumping into two agents walking the opposite way. She sure hopes that the agent got the base shut down because she has abandoned all subtlety as she sprints down the corridors.

She rounds another corner and slides to a stop as she sees the glass walls of the lab. Jemma is clearly visible through them standing next to Fitz. They’re both bent over something on one of their research tables and she sighs in relief. If this is Ward’s idea of a prank - making her sprint through the base at six am - she is not going to be happy. 

But then his tone was too urgent for that and all his other intel has been right so far. They’ve got nothing to lose by checking the base. She moves to the side of the hallway so she’s out of the way while she talks to Ward, “She’s in the lab with Fitz. They’re both fine. I had the base shut down so I’ll keep an eye on them while Coulson has a team search the whole area. Do you have any information on the Inhuman’s powers?”

He sighs so softly she thinks she imagined it, but if she didn’t she would have said it sounded like he’s relieved: maybe that Jemma is safe? It’s hard to tell with him. “Hang on,” is all he says, and then she hears the phone clattering as he sets it down. She hears him yelling faintly through the phone but can’t make out the words. She winces slightly when she hears a loud grunt like someone’s just been punched in the solar plexus. She guesses some things never change.

She steps towards the door to the lab, pushing it open to check on FitzSimmons while she waits. It’s only another few seconds before Ward’s on the phone again. The scientists haven’t even noticed her yet. He speaks, quickly, and this is the first time she’s heard actual worry bleed into his tone, “It’s a shapeshifter.”

She curses under her breath, her eyes flicking to the hunched over form of Fitz standing next to Jemma. She hisses into the phone, “Don’t hang up,” and drops the phone on a table by the door.

She rolls her shoulders once and then puts on her fake cheerful voice and walks confidently into the room, mentally cursing herself for not grabbing her ICER on the way out of her room, “Hey, Jemma, Fitz! How are you guys up this early after last night? My head’s pounding and I’m exhausted.” She scans the room for a weapon and spots an ICER on a table across the room. She just needs to get to it. She hopes Fitz hasn’t been tinkering with it.

Jemma turns as Skye finishes speaking and opens her mouth to reply before landing on Skye’s appearance: her tangled hair, her bare feet, the sweatpants with a hole in the knee, and asks, quite concerned, “Yes, I see that. Are you quite sure you’re alright? You do look a bit shaky. I could take a look at your head if you want.” Fitz turns too and smiles at her. Skye smiles back shakily. His pulse hasn’t picked up so either it’s Fitz or it’s the shapeshifter but they don’t know she’s onto them.

Normally she’d refuse but she needs Jemma away from the person who is possibly not Fitz so she screws up her face in a look of pain and says, “I’m sure it’s just from the hangover but I wouldn’t mind a checkup.”

Jemma narrows her eyes at Skye’s easy acceptance. Normally, it’s a hard-won battle to get her to voluntarily submit herself to any sort of medical assistance. It only seems to confirm that something is wrong with her to the doctor because Jemma hurries to her medical station. Fitz however, turns back to whatever he was working on. Before Jemma can return with medical equipment Skye steps after her. They’re closer to the ICER across the room if they’re at the medical station.

As soon as she’s standing next to Jemma, a table away from maybe-not-Fitz, she grabs the smaller woman’s elbow and pulls her over to the table with the ICER and exclaims, “Ooo, what is this?” as she picks it up. Fitz hears her loud question and turns to look at them and Jemma stares at her like she’s crazy. Skye sends up a prayer that the ICER is fully intact and then points it at maybe-not-Fitz.

Jemma rolls her eyes and tries to take it from Skye but she pushes the scientist behind her with her free arm, “Jemma, listen to me. There’s a shapeshifter after you. I don’t think that’s Fitz.” 

Fitz is still staring at them, a look of confusion on his face, but his pulse jumps. It could just be Fitz, nervous at having an ICER pointed at him, she’s not quite sure yet, although she could hazard a guess that it’s not just nervous Fitz. “What do you mean, Skye? Of course, It’s me,” Fitz says.

Skye doesn’t lower the ICER and instead speaks to Jemma again, “Has he been out of your sight this morning?”

Jemma stutters for a moment, obviously in shock, but at a nudge from Skye finds the words she’s looking for, “Yes, yes. We only got to the lab about fifteen minutes ago and five minutes after we got here Fitz went to the restroom. Are you sure-”

Skye doesn’t have time for this, “Jemma, call Coulson.” Jemma nods and pulls out her comm from one of the pockets in her lab coat. Skye would have done it earlier but she’s in her pajamas with no weapons or communications devices. She directs her next question at the still confused probably-not-Fitz, as she hears Jemma whispering into her comm in the background, “Tell me something only Fitz would know.”

He opens and closes his mouth a few times before speaking, “I don’t know- I don’t know what you mean.” His pulse is picking up now.

Before Skye can get another word out, Jemma speaks, “When did you propose to me?”

Skye blinks and shoots Jemma a glance, trying to gauge if she’s bluffing or not. She can’t tell with the fleeting look she gets at Jemma’s face and she can’t afford to let her gaze leave Fitz for longer than a moment so she turns back and waits for an answer from the man across the room. 

She’s got her guess as to what’s coming next and sure enough, the definitely-not-Fitz’s pulse spikes, and they jump towards the cover of the nearby table. The seconds warning her powers give her is all she needs and she fires the thankfully working ICER. It hits the Inhuman squarely in the chest in the middle of their dive and they crash to the floor behind the table. Skye feels Jemma jump behind her at the loud crash of the body hitting the ground. 

Skye keeps the ICER raised as she steps towards the body and around the table. Without conscious control of the shifting, they’ve reverted back to what she assumes is their original form: what appears to be a skinny teenager. It’s at that moment that a group of black-clad specialists enter the room, sweeping it with their guns. Even though she knows realistically it’s only been about 45 seconds since Jemma alerted them, she still can’t help but roll her eyes at the luck that they happen to arrive just after she’s neutralized the threat. Although she doesn’t think she can categorize a small kid as a threat, especially since she could tell they were afraid. They didn’t even try to attack, just dove for cover. She’s not sure why they were trying to kidnap Jemma but she’s sure they can get the kid to explain and then get them help. 

As soon as she’s certain the specialists have the situation under control she turns back to Jemma, who’s still slightly trembling. She stuffs the ICER into the waistband of the back of her sweatpants and wraps her arms around Jemma. She can’t help her curiosity so she asks, “Did Fitz really propose?”

That prompts a quiet laugh from Jemma as she squeezes Skye, “No, but he better do it soon.” 

Skye smiles and laughs too. She pulls back from the scientist when she hears someone call “Jemma!” from behind her. She turns and sees Fitz rushing towards them, Coulson following behind. Jemma quickly meets Fitz and buries her face in his shoulder. Skye smiles at the duo as Fitz whispers something in her ear and brushes a hand through her hair.

Coulson steps into place beside her, “We found him and another agent knocked out in one of the bathrooms.” She catches his eye and they both smile as they watch the couple’s affections in front of them. Then he asks, “How’d you know about all this?” 

As the adrenaline high fades from her system and the real world starts to fill in the edges of her mind she curses and takes a step back, “I’ll tell you all about it, AC. I just forgot about something. Give me ten minutes.”

He smiles like he already knows what she’s talking about, and he probably does, and just says, “Go.” 

She smiles her thanks and rushes to the table by the door of the lab, snatching up her phone and retreating past the swarm of agents and down the hall, stepping into the empty lounge before she speaks, “Ward? Are you still there?”

It’s been about five minutes since she set the phone down, so he’d probably have been justified in hanging up. To her surprise, he answers, “You told me not to hang up.” It sounds like he’s smiling. “Besides, it sounded like quite a show. How could I miss it?”

She snorts, “Well I guess show is one word for it.”

“You handled yourself well in there,” is all he says, and if she didn’t know better she’d think he sounds a bit sad.

She brushes it off and says, “I should hope so. I am a fully trained agent. It’s been a long time since I was that defenseless girl you found in a van.” 

There’s that almost sigh that she can’t hear so much as feel from the vibrations of his breath through the phone, “I know,” and that’s definitely some kind of sadness in his voice, maybe… regret? She can’t quite tell over the phone but it makes her stomach turn either way.

He doesn’t say anything else so she speaks to fill the heavy silence that’s descended, “How did you come by the information about Jemma?”

He just says, “I have my sources,” and she can hear the smirk in his voice. 

She finds she’s not as annoyed at his avoidance of the question as she might have been. She tries a different question, one she’s more eager to hear the answer to, “Why call me? Why not Coulson?” 

He pauses and she can tell he’s debating answering honestly. He must come to a decision because he sighs, this time audibly, “I thought you were the one most likely to hear me out.” That sounds true, if not the whole truth, but she doesn’t have a reason to doubt him yet.

“I mean you have been helping us, pretty consistently, so I figure that counts for something. And I know Coulson sees it the same way so you shouldn’t worry about him hanging up on you,” she says smiling.

He chuckles, “Is that your way of saying not to call you again?”

She laughs out loud, “Well, maybe not at 6 in the morning.” Before she has time to process what she’s saying the words are out. She clamps her mouth shut as soon as she realizes she’s just sorta, kinda told Ward it’s ok if he calls her as long as it’s not early in the morning. 

Ward doesn’t seem to notice her embarrassment and just chuckles again, saying, “I’ll keep that in mind.” She finds she’s not as upset by her slip up as she thought she’d be. She’s not minding talking to Ward right now, how bad can it be in the future if he delivers intel like this, over the phone? It’s definitely quicker. Before she can speak again he asks a question and it’s almost hesitant, “When did you guys start calling her Jemma?”

The question catches her off guard. She hadn’t even realized he’d been calling her Simmons throughout their rush through the base. She tries to recall when the switch occurred. As she runs back the years in her head she thinks about the emotion in Ward’s voice. She knows he was playing a character when he was a SHIELD agent but somehow it's never quite struck her that maybe she hadn’t known the real Grant Ward. That maybe this Ward, with actual emotion in his voice when he’s not in spy mode, is the real Ward. And then she finds the date she’s looking for and is pulled from her thoughts as she answers.

She winces as she says it, “I think it was actually after we got them back from the ocean.” After he’d thrown them into it goes unsaid, but it echoes in both their heads anyways. Skye pulls on the sleeve of her grey sleep shirt, a nervous habit she’s realized recently she does quite often.

The silence hangs for a few moments before he asks something else, “Are they actually engaged?”

She sighs in relief. This one does not require any emotional torture for either of them, “Oh no. Jemma was just bluffing to get the shapeshifter to guess at a date so we’d know. They just freaked out instead. Either way, mission accomplished.” As an afterthought, she adds, “They have been together for about a year though,” because it occurs to her that he might not know.

“Oh,” he pauses. “Good for them.”

“Yeah,” is all she says and silence falls again.

“Well,” Grant breaks it a few seconds later and Skye’s grateful they don’t have to sit in the awkwardness for any longer, “I should go.”

Skye knows there are other things she wants to ask him but her mind has gone blank so she just nods, then realizes he can’t see her so she says, “Yeah.” And then something she’s wanted to say hits her and she speaks before she can stop herself, “Ward?”

“Yeah?” 

She exhales softly, “Thank you.” She doesn’t specify for what.

All he whispers is a soft yeah “Yeah,” and then he’s gone. She thinks there were more emotions in that single word, even though she can’t identify any of them, than she’s heard from him since the whole betrayal thing.

She sighs and lowers her phone. She doesn’t regret saying it. It’s true. She’s grateful to him for all the times he’s saved them all. And she didn’t even mind talking to him on the phone. She pulls the lounge door open and walks back towards the now almost empty lab.

She doesn’t even realize she hadn’t asked him why he’d robbed those companies or why he’s helping them until a day later. Her first thought after she realizes is that she’ll ask him next time. And that’s somehow scary, but also comforting (which is even more frightening), that she thinks there’ll be a next time. Of course, knowing the chaos of their lives, there probably will be. She finds she doesn’t mind all that much.


	7. shadows creep and want grows stronger, deeper than the truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn’t answer his question just flops back on her bed and looks at the ceiling and says the first thing that comes to her mind, “Do you ever think about marriage?”
> 
> He’s completely silent for a minute and then, “Are you drunk?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from war of hearts by ruelle
> 
> hope you enjoy!

They quickly find out that the young Inhuman girl, her name is Emma and she’s an orphan, had been in the midst of a breakdown after gaining powers, and had run into someone with a grudge against SHIELD. Skye assumes that’s who she’d heard on the other end of Ward’s call getting beat up. She finds she’s not as bothered by it as she was before. The man had directed the girl after Jemma, telling her that the scientist was one of the top experts on Inhumans in the US and could cure her. Emma had desperately wanted a cure when she discovered she was morphing into anyone she thought about and couldn’t control her powers. 

Skye’s heart breaks a little when she has to tell Emma the man lied: there is no cure. But before the girl, sitting on a bed in their containment room, can tear up again, Skye assures her that SHIELD can help her learn to control her newfound powers and that she’ll personally oversee her training. Before she can get another word out Emma is launching off the bed and wrapping her arms around Skye’s waist. Skye has to brace herself as the girl slams into her but then a smile creeps onto her face and her arms come up to wrap around the girl. They stay like that for a moment and it’s peaceful. It’s also a reminder of just how young Emma is. Skye finds herself thinking of what would be different if someone had done this for Ward. And then she blinks. Why had her mind even gone there? She banishes him from her thoughts and looks back down at the girl with her face buried in Skye’s shoulder and feels a wave of protectiveness wash over her.

When Skye pulls back she’s met by her own face staring back at her. She takes an automatic step back at the shock. Is that really what her hair looks like? The girl seems about ready to start apologizing and crying again so Skye just laughs and ruffles Emma’s hair, which is really her hair, and says “We’ll have to work on that.” Emma smiles and Skye knows she’s going to be okay.

<<<>>>

Five weeks later

Emma’s training is slow going but she works so hard and Skye can’t help but be proud of her. She’s mostly mastered being able to maintain her original appearance while thinking about someone else, which means there’s not as much shifting from one person to the next, one after the other, as there had been for the first three weeks. That had definitely almost given Skye whiplash so she’s glad Emma’s mostly mastered that. Plus they’ve been going over some basic fighting moves, mostly just defense.

Of course, overseeing Emma’s training means Skye hasn’t been out on as many missions as she usually is. It’s only until Emma’s comfortable enough on the base and has a basic grasp on her powers. They don’t want her accidentally discovering a new power and destroying the base while Quake, one of their only trained Inhumans, isn’t in the area.

And Skye loves seeing Emma’s smile when she’s able to remain herself while Skye tries to distract her, but she’s still starting to go a bit stir crazy. Before everything, when it was just her, she was never in one place for long. She had her van and she had the open road. And while she doesn’t really miss that time, when she was lost and alone, she sometimes misses the freedom it brought, the endless travel. Her missions allow her to see new places and recapture that feeling, even if it’s just staking out a HYDRA base from a cute little restaurant. She knows, in the long scheme of things, it hasn’t even been that long since she left the base, but she would kill for just one quick mission to let off some steam. There’s only so much she can do in the gym.

So when one day she wipes her brow and excuses herself from her sparring session with May to grab her ringing cell phone and it says ‘blocked caller’ she can’t help the excitement that bubbles up in her gut. Logically she knows it’s not necessarily him but there is the possibility and that means he could have intel, which means maybe she can convince Coulson to let her pop off on a quick mission. She smiles and waves to May to indicate she’s going to take the call. May just nods and moves to the weight section of the gym. 

Skye leans over, grabs her water bottle from the mat, and heads for the door, swiping up on the call to answer it as she goes and putting it up to her ear “I better not have to sprint barefoot through the base this time.” She hears his chuckle through the phone and she’s relieved it’s him because otherwise, that would have been awkward. She can’t help her answering smile that creeps across her features as she makes her way to her room.

“I’m afraid not,” he teases but then pauses, almost hesitant “This one’s not quite that urgent.” It sounds like a question, and it takes Skye a moment to realize he’s asking if it’s okay to call her with less than urgent tips instead of submitting the intel into the SHIELD database. She searches for a reason why it wouldn’t be fine. It’s quicker and easier this way, and yes, their last call was more than a little awkward but it wasn’t entirely bad. So she finds she doesn’t mind.

She just says “What you got, superspy?” as an answer to his unspoken question. She flinches. She hadn’t meant to use that nickname again. It makes her think of simpler times, like a stupidly, idiotic game of battleship before everything changed. She’s avoided those memories for years, avoiding the red tint to them when she wants them pristine and preserved as the happy, calm moments they should have been. To her surprise, when she examines them, the red tint is mostly a faded pink now and she can barely recognize her smiling face as her own. They seem worlds apart. And she guesses they are, separated by all the Skye’s she’s been between then and now. Somewhere in all those different versions of her, the pain has faded to a dull ache for what might have been. 

She snaps back to the conversation and it’s only been a few seconds but she feels like maybe she’s a different Skye than the one who started this conversation. Maybe this is a Skye that can call Grant Ward a nickname and not feel guilty.

<<<>>>

And so that’s how it works. Skye trains and looks after Emma, and Ward calls every few months with tips and intel. He eventually gives her the number to a burner phone of his, in case he’s ever needed to “rescue her again,” as he puts it and she just laughs and says “pretty sure I won’t need it then,” but enters it into her phone as ‘Ward,’ anyway.

And if their phone calls last a bit longer each time and edge closer to friendly conversations that’s just the nature of change. She still doesn’t ask why he’s helping them. She thinks that’s a question that could shift their careful balance and she’s not sure she’s quite ready for that change. Not yet, not when she’s almost content with her life. This, whatever they’re doing, it only works as long as she doesn’t look at it too closely. So she doesn’t. Besides, it’s the kind of question that’s best suited to a face-to-face conversation and she doesn’t know if they’ll ever have one of those. 

However, she does find out that Ward has taken up contract work, accounting for some of the corporations he’d robbed but it doesn’t account for all of them. She doesn’t ask, but she wouldn’t be surprised to learn the money from some of the robberies had ended up at orphanages.

She also finds out that he’s done some work as a bodyguard for the wealthy in other countries which leads to her laughing wildly at the mental image of Ward in all black, standing unsmiling next to a celebrity, which earns her some weird looks from an agent as she walks down the hallway and a dry comment from Ward about her lack of professionalism. That just makes her laugh harder.

<<<>>>

It’s almost a year after the incident with Emma that FitzSimmons announce their engagement. Everyone’s overjoyed and absolutely no one is surprised. Skye and Kara immediately start planning an engagement party with helpful advice from May and Mack and not so helpful advice from Bobbi. They decide to hold it in the hangar as it’s the biggest room in the base and Hunter enthusiastically volunteers to be the DJ as they can’t bring a regular one onto the base. This results in a frankly spectacular argument between him and Bobbi which begins over music taste and somehow evolves into an argument about who could survive the longest without resources on a deserted island. They end up breaking up over it, again. No one is surprised about this or when they announce they’re back together four days later.

Emma’s feeling remarkably more confident in her own abilities and SHIELD had offered to find her a safe home for two years until she’s 18 and can fend for herself but she’d declined, adamant that she wants to become a SHIELD agent. Skye’s not sure how she feels about that decision, and the continuing danger it means Emma will be in, but she’s proud of her regardless. It also means that Emma has to go to the newly reinstated academy, with a brand new Inhuman program, for a few months of training. Skye had promised her before she left that she would still be her SO when she returned and had quickly wiped away her tears before Emma could see them as she hugged the smaller girl.

And so, a week after Emma’s departure, Skye finds herself being manhandled back to her room by Jemma as she stumbles and laughs. Yeah, she’s definitely hammered. But the party had been a huge success. Half the base had turned up and everyone had been eager to see Jemma’s ring. There’d even been a cute agent that had slipped Skye a piece of paper with his number on it after they’d talked for 15 minutes. She’s pretty sure she still has it somewhere, stuffed in one of the pockets of her leather jacket.

They finally reach Skye’s room and Jemma opens the door with one hand while pulling Skye in behind her with the other. Skye stumbles but makes it into the room and collapses on her bed. Jemma just shakes her head, “You’re gonna have one hell of a headache tomorrow. C’mon, let’s get you out of that jacket.” She pulls Skye up without much resistance and pulls the jacket off, draping it over the desk chair. “Do you want to take a shower?” Skye shakes her head and yawns, falling back on the bed again. Jemma apparently gives up on getting Skye to change because she rolls her eyes and smiles, turning off the light and heading for the door.

As she closes the door Skye calls out a quiet, “Thanks, Jemma.”

Jemma smiles and whispers, “Goodnight, Skye. Thanks for the party,” and closes the door.

Darkness fills the room and Skye sighs. She’s not really tired yet and she doesn’t want to be alone. She fumbles for the light on her bedside table and turns it on. Her room is small, really just a bed, a desk, and an attached bathroom. Most rooms don’t even have that last one. In fact, most of the agents share rooms. And she’s content with her quarters, but tonight it just feels too small. She doesn’t feel like wandering the base either though.

And then she thinks about Jemma and Fitz and laughs out loud as she recalls their sickly sweet smiles all night. And then that reminds her of the number of the cute boy in her jacket pocket. Why not, she thinks. She reaches for her desk chair next to her bed and fumbles for her phone in her jacket. She has a harder time than she’d like to admit getting it out of the pocket. Her struggle only makes her giggle which makes it even harder to wrangle it from the fabric and then fumble with the phone until it finally starts ringing.

She pulls it up to her ear and listens to it ring for a moment before she realizes she never actually found the paper with the guy’s number. She pulls the phone down to peer at the name on the phone and blearily recognizes that it says ‘Ward’ just as the call’s picked up. Too late to hang up now. She shrugs as Ward’s voice filters faintly through the speakers of the phone in her hand. She raises it back up to her ear so she can hear him and tries to recall where he is and what the time difference is. The last time she’d checked she thought he was somewhere in India but she can’t recall what the time difference is for the life of her right now. Oh well.

And then his voice finally registers and he sounds almost panicked, “Skye! Skye, are you okay?” She giggles at his concern and he pauses, hesitant, “Skye?”

She doesn’t answer his question just flops back on her bed and looks at the ceiling and says the first thing that comes to her mind, “Do you ever think about marriage?”

He’s completely silent for a minute and then, “Are you drunk?”

She ignores him, “Like if spies can ever really get married. How would that even work in our line of work? I haven’t even been on a date in years.” She groans remembering she’s probably lost that guy’s number.

Ward sighs like he’s resigning himself to this conversation and asks, “What prompted this?”

She answers honestly without even thinking that maybe she shouldn’t be telling him of all people this, “Fitz and Jemma are engaged.”

“Oh,” He seems to be processing this. She lets him and starts humming something along the lines of shake it off by Taylor Swift, apparently a favorite of Hunter’s as it had been played more than a few times at the party. She tries to imagine Ward’s facial expressions as best she can, even though she hasn’t seen him in almost five years. Finally, he says, “Well, tell them I say congratulations.”

She snorts and doesn’t think before saying “I’m not sure they want to hear it from you.” It registers a minute later in her alcohol addled brain that maybe that wasn’t the kindest thing she could have said.

He just sighs and says, “Yeah, you’re probably right,” and she can tell he’s hurt. He pauses but then he can’t seem to help it and says, “It was supposed to float.”

She immediately knows what he’s talking about and she sighs, “I know.” That surprises her. Does she know that? Does she believe him? She hadn’t the last time he’d said it, back when he was in Vault D. She searches through the muddle of emotions she’s trying to sort through, and from what she can find, she does believe him. Of course, his intent doesn’t change what happened but it might change her perception of it.

She can’t tell if her statement has surprised him too. She wishes she could see his face. All he says is, “You should get some sleep, Skye.”

She nods against her pillow as she turns on her side, yawning, “You’re probably right.” Then she remembers something, “You never answered my question.”

“Hm?”

“The one about being married. Have you ever thought about it?” She’s already drifting off, her fingers slackening on the phone in her hands.

She doesn’t think he’s going to answer but then, “Yeah… I have. Goodnight, Skye,” and it’s a quiet sort of emotion in his voice.

“Goodnight, Grant,” and she hears the click of him hanging up, and the phone slips from her hand onto the sheets as her eyes slip closed.

<<<>>>

The next morning she wakes with a killer headache and surprisingly it’s May who delivers her some water and painkillers, instructing her to get some rest. 

The party of the previous night is blurry, but as she naps and periodically does some simple work on some projects when she can manage it, parts of it float back to her. She’s on her computer, trying to finish up a report from a mission the week before when she remembers the phone call. Her brain freezes for a moment trying to process it. A flush of embarrassment creeps onto her cheeks.

She’d called Grant Ward in the middle of the night on a phone supposed to be for emergencies… while absolutely hammered. She’s honestly surprised she’s even remembering parts of it. It’s mostly just the part where he’s hurt by her comment about FitzSimmons not wanting to hear from him and then her acknowledgment that she does know he thought the pod would float when he dumped them out of the plane. That revelation is still surprising to her but she brushes it aside for the moment, instead focusing on FitzSimmons.

The truth is Jemma and Fitz, well Jemma more than Fitz, probably don’t want to hear from Ward. Fitz had helped her with the investigation into Ward years ago but as SHIELD grew he’d become busy with other things. And it’s not even really an investigation anymore. He might be open to hearing from Ward though. He’s not one for grudges.

But then there’s Jemma. Only Coulson, Skye, Fitz, Kara, and the few agents who’d briefly been on the official investigation years ago, even know that Ward’s been helping SHIELD for the past several years. Well, and May probably. She’s co-director in all but name. She hasn’t said anything about it, but that’s just May. Plue Skye’s fairly sure Jemma took what happened to Fitz even harder than Fitz did. There’s probably no one who wants to hear from Ward less. But doesn’t she owe it to Jemma to at least give her all the facts? She’s a scientist. Surely she can wrestle with the data that shows Ward’s been helping them. 

So Skye resolves to tell Jemma that Ward’s been helping them. As soon as she’s feeling better, she amends as her forehead starts pounding again and she closes her laptop, switching back to her bed for some rest. As she falls asleep something floats to the front of her mind: she might have called Ward by his first name last night.

She doesn’t even realize that the phone call was basically her drunk calling an ex, well an ex-almost, until the next morning. When she does, a fresh flush of embarrassment quickly covers her cheeks.

She doesn’t recall any more of her late-night conversation with one Grant Ward. The next time he calls with a tip he doesn’t mention it and she’s too embarrassed to ask. And so everything returns to normal. Or as normal as things get for them.


	8. you can save your apologies, you're nothing but a liar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “... Ward? You think Ward has been helping you?” Her incredulity is clear in her raised voice as she rolls her eyes and throws her hands in the air. The bustle in the rest of the room quiets as the other scientists try to subtly listen in.
> 
> “Jemma-” Fitz tries but she cuts him off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from warrior by demi lovato (the title is meant from Jemma's perspective about Ward)
> 
> hope you guys like it!

It’s two months before she finds the time and the courage to confront Jemma about Ward. She’s just come back from a mission and she’d spent the whole flight back to the base trying to plan out what to say and predict how Jemma would react. She can’t imagine a world in which it goes well, but she’d promised herself she’d do this. For Jemma’s sake and maybe her own too.

So as soon as she gets to the base she takes a shower and changes then makes her way to the lab. It’s the middle of the day so it’s fairly busy, with other scientists going in and out. Jemma and Fitz are working close to each other in the back of the room on some kind of gadget. Well, Fitz is working on it. Jemma’s trying to direct a fairly new scientist in the proper protocol for some experimental tech or other. Fitz just pats Jemma’s arm as she sighs and the other scientist scurries off, lab coat flapping as he rushes past Skye and out the door. Apparently heading the new and rapidly expanding Research Division of SHIELD is more than science experiments all day.

However, Jemma’s face lights up when she sees Skye and she rushes to hug her friend. Skye smiles at Fitz, sitting at his desk, over Jemma’s shoulder and he returns it brightly. Jemma pulls back and grins, “So how was the mission?”

Skye shrugs, “Same as always.”

Jemma scoffs, “At least tell me you kicked some HYDRA ass.”

“You know it,” Skye chuckles, walking over to Fitz’s desk and looking at the gadget he’s working on over his shoulder. It almost looks like a bracelet, a very high-tech one.

Before she can even ask he’s explaining, “I’ve been fiddling with some of the cloaking technology from the BUS, you know reflections and cameras and stuff, and I’m trying to come up with a way to make it into a sort of stealth suit for individual wear.” 

She can hear the excitement in his voice and knows he’s refraining from going into scientific terms for her sake. She can’t help but tease him though, “So basically an Invisibility Cloak.”

He scowls, “Yes well mine uses actual science, but since I know you’re only making fun I’m going to let that comparison slide.” She laughs and nudges his shoulder playfully. He doesn’t look at her but she can see the smile on his face.

Jemma shakes her head fondly and then turns her attention to Skye again, a questioning look at why she’s here in her eyes. Skye opens her mouth then hesitates. She needs to just tell them. She clears her throat, “Before I tell you guys this I need you to just promise you’ll hear me out, ok?”

Fitz looks up from his tinkering and scans her face searching for clues as to what she’s talking about. She schools her face into a mask of calm. Eventually, he nods. Then Skye looks to Jemma who also nods and says, “Of course, Skye.”

“Ok,” she takes a deep breath. This isn’t going to end well. “Over the last few years, SHIELD has had a secret informant.” She sees the moment Fitz figures out what she’s talking about on his face. She barrels on before he can say anything, “He’s been very useful in locating and sabotaging HYDRA bases and giving info on anti-Inhuman groups. And he’s saved all our lives, mine more than a few times.” 

She stops to take a breath and Jemma interjects, “Is this your way of trying to get us to approve of a new boyfriend? Because I’m sure he’s fine Skye, especially if all that’s true. You don’t have to worry about us.” 

Skye sees Fitz wince out of the corner of her eye and she scrambles to fix the situation, “No, no, it’s definitely not that. It’s just this has been fairly secret and I thought you deserved to know who it is, just so you have all the information.”

Jemma crosses her arms across her chest, almost defensively, as if she knows what’s coming, “Ok, then, who is it?”

Skye glances at Fitz, but he doesn’t move to stop her so she says it. It’s barely a whisper, “It’s Ward.”

It feels like there should be absolute silence but there are still scientists bustling about the lab behind them. She only now realizes she probably should have asked if they could leave for a few minutes before she tried to have this conversation. Too late now.

“... Ward? You think Ward has been helping you?” Her incredulity is clear in her raised voice as she rolls her eyes and throws her hands in the air. The bustle in the rest of the room quiets as the other scientists try to subtly listen in.

“Jemma-” Fitz tries but she cuts him off.

“No! You mean the Ward that betrayed all of us, that dropped Fitz and me out of a plane? A plane, Skye! The one that gave Fitz brian damage and repeatedly tried to kill all of us? That Ward, Skye?”

Skye sighs, “Jemma, he helped us rescue Mike all those years ago, and then he rescued me from HYDRA too. And he’s been helping us with intel for years.”

Jemma whirls to her fiance, “And you’re ok with this? I can accept using him when we have no other choice. But how do we know he’s not plotting something?” Skye flinches at her implication of “using him,” but knows she’s not wrong. It tugs at her heart a little.

Fitz answers and he sounds exhausted, “I- I don’t know, Jemma. But he’s helping us and he saved Skye and it’s been four years. I don’t know if I’m okay with it but it is what it is. I’m not going to stop him from helping us.” He scrubs at his face with his hand, “He’s trying to be better Jemma. And I’m trying to understand him. And if you’re angry on my account, don’t be. I’m fine now, Jemma.”

Skye shoots him a grateful glance. He doesn’t acknowledge it, just looks at Jemma, weariness clear on his face.

Jemma sighs and looks around incredulously, “Why am I the bad guy for not trusting him? You shot him, Skye!”

Skye closes her eyes and tilts her head back to the ceiling, breathing through her nose before looking back at Jemma, “You’re not the bad guy. You don’t have to trust him. No one’s asking you to do that. I just thought you deserved to know. I wanted you to have all the facts. And that was a long time ago, Jemma. We were all different people then.”

Fitz is unmoving beside her and Jemma just stares at her and then quieter than she’s been this whole conversation, “Have you forgiven him?”

That hits Skye square in the chest and she can’t breathe for a moment. She tries to ground herself but Jemma’s racing pulse isn’t helping. She latches onto Fitz instead, ever the pillar of calm, and tries to match her pulse to his before attempting to answer. That’s a question she’s been avoiding for such a long time. “I- I don’t know. I don’t know, Jemma. Sometimes, I think maybe I have, but then other times I’m so angry at him for what he did to us.” She doesn’t mention that the days where she feels that anger are dwindling. “But I’m trying to understand him. And I think I do understand a bit more now.”

There’s silence. Jemma’s features are carefully blank as she nods almost robotically and walks out of the lab.

Neither Skye nor Fitz move. Slowly, the chatter and movement of the lab pick up again, circling around them as if they’re in a bubble: Fitz sitting in his chair with his elbows on his knees and Skye leaning against the lab table next to him.

Finally, Fitz speaks, and it’s so quiet Skye barely hears it, “Why now?”

Skye blinks and it takes her a moment to realize what he’s asking, “Um, he wanted me to tell you congratulations on your engagement and I told him you probably wouldn’t want to hear it, which made me realize I owed you, and especially Jemma, the truth.”

He still doesn’t move. Skye shifts a bit uncomfortably. “So you talk to him regularly, about non-SHIELD stuff I mean.”

It’s not really a question but Skye feels the urge to correct him, “Well, not really. The thing about your engagement just slipped out. I didn’t mean to tell him. I’m sorry.”

He blinks and finally moves, scrubbing his face again and turning towards her. He’s smiling sadly now, but his eyes are compassionate. “I know and it’s okay. I don’t mind all that much, certainly not as much as Jemma. I do think it’s probably best if we don’t share that particular congratulation with her until she’s had time to process,” he gestures with his hands, “all this.” Skye readily agrees.

They fall into another silence for a moment, but this time it’s comfortable. Skye feels the need to break it though, “I’m sorry, for all this.”

Fitz shakes his head, “No, we needed to hear it. It is the truth after all. Jemma just needs some time. And Skye,” She turns her head and meets his eyes, “I hope you know I don’t particularly mind if you do talk about non-SHIELD stuff with him.” 

Skye smiles softly, “Thanks,” and she can feel her a flush rising on her cheeks. She’s not sure why though, and she quickly turns her face away from Fitz so he doesn’t see.

<<<>>>

Jemma doesn’t mention Ward again but she does speak to Skye two days later as if nothing had happened, so all in all, Skye’s filing it under ‘not a total disaster.’ Although, she is left with a question about forgiveness that she isn’t sure how to answer. She pushes it to the back of her mind for another time.

She’s not sure how long she can keep pushing things about Ward to the back of her mind. She can feel something coming, a turning point maybe. She isn’t sure, but it all feels too much, like she’s waiting for a rubber band to snap or balancing on the edge of a knife. The earth whispers it to her like a rumbling in her core every time she really listens. She can only ignore it for so long.


	9. put me to the test, I'll prove that I'm strong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s late at night and the hallway’s dim as Skye walks back to her room, file in hand, to grab her go-bag after a quick overview of her new mission. Apparently, an anti-Inhuman group in Indianapolis is planning an attack on the government there in two days because of a vote on an Inhuman protection act. And SHIELD had only just gotten intel about it so she’d been awoken at two am with a few other agents and told to grab her stuff. She’s team leader on this one so she’ll brief the rest of her team on the plane. She’s of course not thrilled about this and also still blinking away sleep. This group could have at least given a few more days notice of their nefarious schemes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from warrior by beth crowley, which is such a skyeward song
> 
> anyway catch me just inventing more powers for Skye, just roll with it
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

It’s late at night and the hallway’s dim as Skye walks back to her room, file in hand, to grab her go-bag after a quick overview of her new mission. Apparently, an anti-Inhuman group in Indianapolis is planning an attack on the government there in two days because of a vote on an Inhuman protection act. And SHIELD had only just gotten intel about it so she’d been awoken at two am with a few other agents and told to grab her stuff. She’s team leader on this one so she’ll brief the rest of her team on the plane. She’s of course not thrilled about this and also still blinking away sleep. This group could have at least given a few more days notice of their nefarious schemes. 

She’s distracted from her annoyance by a shiver down her spine. She knows this base like the back of her hand and she can sense other agent’s pulses as they sleep in their quarters, but somehow it seems different at night. It’s an underground base. It’s not like there’s normally sunlight pouring in. But the dimmer lights and the lack of agents bustling around gives it the feel of a ghost town. 

The other agents who’ve been chosen for the mission have smaller quarters on the other side of the base where they’re retrieving their things, so she’s alone. She hurries her footsteps as she rounds a corner. Finally, she’s pulling open the door to her room and grabbing the go-bag sitting beside her bed. And then she’s hurrying down the empty halls again, this time towards the hangar to board one of the jets. Once she’s onboard she can get dressed properly and then after the team briefing and plan overview maybe she can grab a few hours of sleep. 

She yawns again as she walks up the boarding ramp of one of the smaller jets. It’s not a large mission. There are only six of them. The intel had said the militia group wasn’t well-armed or organized. Skye’s only going in case Quake is needed as backup. Better safe than sorry.

There’s only one other agent already on the jet, a woman named Martinez. She smiles at Skye as Skye takes a seat across from her. Skye doesn’t know her well, most of their interactions have been on other missions. She’s a good agent, very efficient, but withdrawn. But then Skye’s the same way. She thinks it’s just an agent thing. Too long being a spy and you forget how to open up to anyone.

She closes her eyes and leans her head back against the metal of the jet’s side. She hears the footsteps and quiet conversation of the other agents entering the jet. She lets the vibrations of their breaths and heartbeats fade into the background and breathes in deeply. Her thoughts turn to Emma, her rookie, away at the academy. She’s still not sure she should have let her go. She thinks maybe the girl takes the shape of an adult so often that maybe they’d forgotten how young she is. Once she comes back Skye’s going to talk to her, and Coulson, about what she really wants. If she really wants to stay with SHIELD, there’s no way is Skye letting her out in the field until she’s an adult. But the training at the academy can’t hurt. She’s going to need self-defense skills no matter what she chooses.

And then she suddenly remembers her last conversation with Ward. He’d mentioned he was in Indianapolis for a job. Of course, he wouldn’t tell her what he was doing but she’d appreciated the trust he’d showed by voluntarily sharing his location. And now she’s about to be on her way to Indianapolis. She wonders if he’s still there. Maybe they’re going to be in the same city for the first time in years. It feels unsettling, but not unwelcome. She wonders if she should tell him she’s possibly flying towards him right now. 

Before she can decide, she hears the ramp of the jet closing and she opens her eyes. She needs to be focused, for her and her team’s sake. So she stands, grabbing the mission file, to brief her team.

<<<>>>

Honestly, she doesn’t know why they even bother making plans anymore. They so rarely work. Now, is certainly not one of those rare times. They find the base well enough, an abandoned warehouse at first glance, but their intel was way off. The group is way more organized and larger than they’d thought. Turns out they’re a cell of a larger underground anti-Inhuman group called Judgement. A stupid name if you ask Skye but she’s pretty sure they’ve got some big backers because their weapons are surprisingly quality. Of course, they only find this out once they’ve already entered the compound under the warehouse to set charges but they’re severely outnumbered from the beginning and are quickly backed into a corner in the middle of a shootout.

Skye’s already called for backup but the Playground in New York where they came from is the closest base, so they’re on their own for now. Quake’s powers are best utilized in larger spaces and she can’t collapse the building with them still in it so she’s resigned to blasting individuals away. 

She does bring the ceiling of the hallway in front of them down on top of five men still shooting at them from down the hallway but when the dust settles, coating her and her agents in a fine layer of white, they’re quickly replaced. With this amount of manpower, she’s starting to think there’s something larger than stopping a protection bill going on here. Not the time to muse on it though.

She’s getting fed up with this. Turner, one of her agents, has already taken a bullet to the gut. If he doesn’t get medical assistance soon it doesn’t look good. And she can’t see a way where they shoot their way out of this. She breathes in deeply through her nose, trying to avoid the dust particles and steady her nerves, feeling for the threads tying her to the earth. They’re vibrating in her head and she tries to sort through them, searching for the right one.

There it is. She takes one last breath and pulls. All their enemies in the base freeze and start to collapse. She opens her eyes to see her team staring at her. She can feel sweat forming on her brow as she strains to hold onto the thread that’s stopping agents' pulses. “Go,” she grits out. She thanks whatever deity that may be listening that they’re fully trained agents that don’t know her that well because they don’t hesitate. Rowe, another agent, grabs the injured Turner and tosses him over his shoulder as gently as possible, and then they’re all sprinting down the hallways, over chunks of collapsed ceiling and convulsing bodies, towards the stairs to the surface. She doesn’t know how long she can hold this and she’s not going to kill all these people. She doesn’t think her conscience can take that. It feels different than collapsing a building on enemy agents.

She waits five more seconds and then releases the thread, gasping for breath and holding her abdomen as she slides down the nearest wall, wiping sweat out of her eyes. Most of the agents in this hallway are unconscious or stirring feebly, but she can feel others still awake. They’re the ones farthest away from her but they won’t stay that way. 

She wants to collapse. She tries to suck in more air but her chest is a vise. Please let that be the first and last time, she prays dazedly. She never wants to do that again.

She hears the comm in her ear fuzz and then the tinny voice of Martinez flits in and out. She must have damaged the comm when she was pulling on all those individual vibrations. She focuses and tries to pull on the dregs of her powers to amplify the comm and finally she can hear the other woman’s voice, “Turner needs medical ASAP and we’ve got some men on our tail. They were outside when you did… whatever it was. Either way, we can’t lead them to a hospital.” 

Skye doesn’t even have to think before she says, “Get to the jet and take off. There are medical supplies on there. Then get him to the closest hospital that’s safe.” She pulls herself into a standing position using the wall and sways a little. Her vision blacks out for a second and she stands still for a moment, waiting for it to clear. 

“What about you, boss?” Martinez’s voice is cutting in and out again. 

Skye knows she’s losing her last grasp on her powers. “I’ll be fine. I have a contact in the city and backup will be here in three hours. Go.” 

She just barely makes out a faint “copy that” before there’s a crackling noise and the comm goes dead. Turns out using her powers to mess with it is not the best for its internal mechanics.

She hears the bodies in the hall stirring and she starts to pick her way past them as quickly as possible with her shaky vision. She reaches for her powers again but there’s nothing. Well, nothing she can manipulate. She can still make out some vibrations but they’re muddled and she definitely can’t touch them. Her hearing’s probably more accurate right now than trying to sense movement. So she reaches for her ICER at her hip instead, pulling it out with one hand as she uses the other to steady herself against the wall. 

She sure hopes what she said about having a contact here is right. She’s not even sure if Ward is still in the city. If he’s not, she’s going to have to find a place to hide out for three hours. She’s not sure she’s going to last that long before she passes out.

She makes it to the stairwell before she can hear actual movement behind her. She stumbles through the door before any of the newly awakened agents catch sight of her. Hopefully, she can slip out of here before they all wake up, going relatively unnoticed. As she climbs, a little strength returns to her limbs, probably a last burst of adrenaline before she loses all energy, and she speeds up. 

And then there’s the door to the surface warehouse and she’s finally out of the compound. She only has to ICER two people as she stumbles out of the building, blinking in the sunlight. She knows she looks like a ghost, covered head to toe in white dust and bits of plaster, but thankfully there’s no one around to be frightened of her dreadful appearance. 

She quickly crosses the road and makes it a few blocks, noting the street names, before she ducks into an alleyway and fumbles for her phone, ICER still clasped tightly in one hand. She finds Ward’s number easily enough and brings it to her ear as it rings, keeping her eyes fixed on the opening of the alley, wary of how screwed she is if they find her here and corner her.

“Skye?” Ward’s voice cuts through the static in her head and she sighs. “Are you alright?” He chuckles, “Or are you drunk again?”

She winces at that memory, or more like lack of memory, but is quickly brought back to the present when her abdomen throbs. She hisses through her teeth and readjusts her grip on the phone, “Are you still in Indianapolis?”

“Um, yeah?” 

If this was less serious she’d laugh at the mental image of confusion on his face but as it is she just says, “Great. I need a favor.”


	10. always missing people that I shouldn't be missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn’t want to deal with this but something in her is going to snap if she leaves here in two hours and they haven’t at least tried to discuss this. So she finally asks, “Why have you been helping us?”
> 
> He blinks and his eyes catch hers. They’re so, so grey. She looks away, her hand tending to her cut stilling. She hears him exhale and then he speaks, “What else am I supposed to do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from I hate u, I love u by gnash
> 
> wanted to include this quote by Nathaniel Hawthorne cause it inspired parts of this chapter, "It is to the credit of human nature, that... it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love"
> 
> props if you can catch the Hannibal reference
> 
> hope you like it!

It’s no more than ten stressful minutes after her call, in which she tries to stay conscious and her head pounds, that a grey SUV is pulling up at the opening of the alley. The windows are tinted and she fingers her ICER warily, trying to make out the form in the driver’s seat. She’s fairly sure it’s not enemy agents because they would have shot her by now but she’s a spy and she can never be too careful. She steps towards the street and the car, ICER raised. And then the passenger window is rolling down and she can see Grant Ward sitting in the driver’s seat. He nods once, glancing around the abandoned street, and then leans over, pushing open the passenger door.

She only hesitates for a moment before she’s crossing the sidewalk and pulling herself into the car. Ward doesn’t pause, pulling away before her door is fully closed. She keeps her ICER clasped in one hand resting on her lap and takes a moment to study Ward. He looks… Well, he looks good. Skye can’t deny that he’s never been bad-looking. He’s still rocking leather with what looks like a fairly new brown leather jacket and his eyes are hidden behind sunglasses. And there’s a bit of grey at his temples now but it doesn’t look bad. It gives him a sort of silver fox look. Just another shade of grey he’s brought into her life. 

It reminds her of how long it’s been since she’s seen him: almost three years since he rescued her from that HYDRA base, five years since he betrayed them. It all feels so distant, a lifetime ago. Of course, she’s seen him on security cameras since then, but there’s something different about seeing him in person, something that’s lost over a computer screen.

How many things have changed since then? How many versions of Skye has she been? She’s lost agents. She’s found comfort in Kara. FitzSimmons are engaged, to be married soon. She’d gained an almost-daughter. And Ward… Well, Ward, she doesn’t know. He’s played so many roles in her life: the enemy government agent, the stern SO, the almost-lover, the betrayer, the enemy, the informant, and now... She doesn’t know. 

He doesn’t say anything as they merge into the traffic heading downtown, but she sees him glance at the ICER still ready to fire in her lap. She doesn’t think he can blame her for it though. She knows without confirmation that he’s armed to the teeth under that jacket. And she’s not going to tell him she can’t even access her powers. Let him think she could bring a building down on them right now.

She debates closing her eyes to ease the headache consuming all parts of her brain but decides she should probably know where she’s going. And to keep an eye on Ward, of course. Strange that that wasn’t her first thought.

She glances at his emotionless face. He brought Kara into her life and he helped her save Emma from herself before it was too late. And maybe he’d even tried to save FitzSimmons a lifetime ago. He’s certainly saved her life more times than she cares to remember. And he’d never once tried to hurt her. She almost smiles when she remembers the time a few months ago that he’d submitted some intel about an 084 in Scotland, along with a picture of the Isle of Skye as a joke. She’d texted him a photo of a maternity ward back.

She flips the safety back onto the ICER. The click echoes loudly in the silence. Ward’s demeanor doesn’t shift, he’s too good for that, but she sees him blink behind his sunglasses.

She tries to release some of the tension built up in her body and leans back in the seat a little but her abdomen decides that isn’t a good idea, and pain stabs at her insides. She brings one hand up to grasp at it, containing a groan. She can see Ward glance at her again and this time he even opens his mouth but she snaps out a “not now” and he closes it, turning his attention back to the road with a last glance at her. She feels a little bad about her tone but she really can’t deal with this right now. So their journey continues in silence.

<<<>>>

Finally, after probably longer than it would have taken normally because he had to make sure there was nobody following them, they pull into the parking garage of a fairly large apartment complex and Ward climbs out. Skye takes a moment to steady her breathing, hoping her legs don’t collapse when she stands up, and then she pushes her door open and steps out. She has to brace a hand against the side of the car as her vision blurs again. Suddenly, Ward’s standing next to her, and she almost tries to take a reflexive step backward before realizing the car’s behind her. He notices her unsteadiness because he asks, “Do you think you can make it up the stairs? It’s only two stories but I don’t want to use the elevator.”

She knows she looks like death, covered in dust and grime. If anyone saw her they might call the cops. Plus, an enclosed space with only one exit is probably not the wisest place to go with people after her, so she nods, pushing herself off the car and after Ward as he turns towards the stairwell. She notices that his back is to her and they’re in almost the same position as they were when she shot him and left him for dead. He’s not stupid by any means, so is it just that he trusts her? She doesn’t have an answer for that.

It occurs to her as Ward pushes open the door to the stairwell and holds it for her that she’d promised herself there were some questions she could only ask in-person and now here they are, her trailing behind him up the stairs to his apartment, as her ribs scream with every step she takes. A backup team will be here in under three hours. She decides that if she finds a time to ask she will, but she makes no promises. She’s already drained physically. She’s not sure she wants to add emotionally to the mix.

And so she makes it up the two flights of stairs, stumbling and holding in grunts of pain, but she makes it and she follows Ward down the hallway to apartment 208. He produces keys from his pocket and unlocks it easily, pushing in the door and walking in first. She follows him in, scanning the plain apartment. It could just as easily have been a hotel room rather than an apartment for all the minimal decoration and distinct feel that it’s barely been lived in. She can tell the furnishings were all there when he moved in. No part of this feels like him.

He walks further in and throws his keys and sunglasses on the table, heading for one of the white cabinets in the kitchen. She walks in after him, instead turning to the living room and sitting on the pristine, white couch. She feels bad about the dirt and blood but she’s going to collapse if she doesn’t sit. She tracks Ward’s movements as he yanks the kitchen cabinet open, a little more harshly than needed, and produces a first-aid kit, before heading back into the living room.

He sits down on the coffee table in front of her and opens the kit, producing some kind of alcohol wipes. He grabs one and leans a little closer but he hesitates at her wary gaze. Then instead, he holds out his hand and offers it to her. She grabs it from him and starts dabbing at a cut on her cheek herself. The silence remains for a moment as he stares at her and she stares back.

Then his eyes soften and he says quietly, “Are you going to tell me what happened?” She doesn’t answer, just drops her eyes, focusing on the first aid kit sitting on the coffee table next to his leg. Is it the safest, most logical decision to avert her eyes in the presence of someone who betrayed her? No. Does she care? Also no. She can’t look at him right now. Besides, she’s sure he knows enough through his contacts that he’d certainly gotten in touch with as soon as she had called.

He sighs, “You should have called me sooner.”

She looks up at that, scanning his face, “Why? Did you know something about them?”

He shakes his head in frustration, “No. But you knew I was staying here. I could have helped you from the beginning, Skye.”

She scoffs and it scratches at her throat, “You know, you’re not exactly the first person on my list of contacts.” She leans past him and grabs another wipe and starts on a long gash on her arm.

Silence falls again and she glances at his face. He’s not looking at her, instead staring out the window across the room, his features carefully blank, a clear sign he’s hurt. She can’t sense his pulse very well but he’s not good at hiding his emotions from her anymore anyway. An almost invincible superspy able to lie about anything and here she is reading him without powers. They never were that different and maybe she just knows herself better than she used to, which means she understands him better. She sighs and Ward’s eyes flick back to hers before darting away again.

She doesn’t want to deal with this but something in her is going to snap if she leaves here in two hours and they haven’t at least tried to discuss this. So she finally asks, “Why have you been helping us?”

He blinks and his eyes catch hers. They’re so, so grey. She looks away, her hand tending to her cut stilling. She hears him exhale and then he speaks, “What else am I supposed to do?”

She wants to scoff, yell at him for not sticking to the archetype of the betrayer, “I’m pretty sure anyone else would have shot me the moment my back was turned.” He chuckles softly and that makes her angrier. She almost growls. What is wrong with him? Why isn’t he angry with her?

He seems to sense her anger as easily as she senses his sadness, fire and ice, “Why? I deserved those bullets.”

She’s reminded of his words of years ago, ‘I’m expendable.’ She wants to scream. Instead, it comes out hushed, “No, you didn’t.” Oh. Oh. He looks up at her sharply, his eyes scanning her face. She hadn’t even realized she wasn’t mad at him, she was mad at… herself. She says it again, for both of them, “You didn’t deserve them.” She pauses, trying to absorb that. And then remembers her question, “So why are you helping us? You could have disappeared, if you wanted to.”

He laughs again. She just stares at him, waiting for an answer. The smile fades and he looks away again, “I need to help, Skye. For me, to try to fix some of the things I broke. I’m not asking for forgiveness, I’m just trying to be better.”

She tilts her head, “Do you not want forgiveness?”

“It’s not that. It’s just I- I don’t think I’ll ever get it. And I’ve made my peace with that.” She doesn’t know what peace looks like but she knows it looks nothing like Grant Ward. But she lets it go.

She doesn’t have the energy for a fight with Ward. She hasn’t had the energy for it for a long time. She thinks grudges take energy, especially if the person you’re trying to hate is trying to change. You have to keep searching for the bad, the things to hate, and it takes energy. Because if you don’t search for the bad, the good starts to shine through. She hasn’t had energy for the hate in a long time. Maybe that’s why she let him keep calling her with intel. Maybe that’s why she drunk called him. Maybe that’s why she’s forgiven him. Because in his admittance that he doesn’t think he deserves it, she finally recognizes that maybe he does. Or maybe he doesn’t. She doesn’t think it’s up to her either way.

Forgiveness isn’t a choice, it’s not something she decided. It’s something that crept up behind her. It’s when he’d tried to save FitzSimmons or the multiple times he’d saved her. It’s when he did what was best for Kara. Or when he saved Jemma from a teenage girl and in the process helped save the girl too.

And maybe unconsciously she’s been forgiving him every time she doesn’t hesitate to pick up his calls or call him a nickname. When she trusts his intel enough to form a mission around it and when she laughs at his terrible puns. It’s in this moment when she realizes she’d missed those grey eyes, like a cloudy sky or a stormy sea, beautiful and dangerous.

She doesn’t say any of that. She doesn’t say anything. She needs time to herself with that realization, time where her head isn’t ringing. So she just returns to cleaning her wounds and wrapping her bruised torso in bandages. He leaves and gets her a water bottle, a blanket, and a change of clothes. “If you want,” he says and gestures in the direction of the bathroom. She nods gratefully and he busies himself in the kitchen while she grabs the clothes and moves slowly but a bit more steadily to the bathroom.

Turns out the change of clothes is one of his black t-shirts and some grey sweatpants. She’s not complaining as she carefully shrugs out of her disgusting clothes. His are soft and clean and they smell like laundry detergent and him. She doesn’t mind. 

She spends a few minutes wetting her hands in the sink and running them through her hair to try to remove some of the dust. She gets most of the larger pieces and it’s less noticeable but she can still feel some scratching at her scalp. She soon gives up when she starts to feel shaky on her feet and heads back to the couch, wrapping the blanket around her as she sits down. 

Her exhaustion is finally catching up to her as she leans back against the couch. She can hear Ward in the kitchen and she appreciates his attempt at offering her privacy. She nods off to the sound of him doing dishes in the other room. It’s oddly domestic.

<<<>>>

She wakes an hour later to pounding on the door and before she can jump up, Kara’s kicking in the door and rushing to her side. Skye glances wildly around the room for someone who isn’t there as Kara tries to check on her and a few other agents sweep the apartment.

“Wha?” Her mouth feels like cotton. Kara is quick to hand her the water bottle still sitting on the coffee table. Skye guzzles it down and then Kara’s ushering her out the door, explaining that they used the tracker in Skye’s comm to find her and that the rest of the backup team had gone to clear out the base and they’re mostly done. Turner’s stable in the hospital and the rest of her team is safe. Of course, they’ll have to deal with this larger anti-Inhuman group but for now, this cell is taken care of. 

Skye’s grateful to her friend for her speed at assuaging any worries she might have. The only ones she can’t help with are the ones Skye has about a certain Grant Ward, disappeared before she could wake up. She only now realizes she’d fallen asleep in his presence without any reservations. Well, she’s still alive so she guesses that’s another reason to trust him.

<<<>>>

She gets checked out by Jemma on the plane back to the base. No long term damage, just a few bruised ribs, and a slight concussion. Nothing that won’t heal in a few weeks. Coulson gives her a hug as soon as she steps off the plane back onto the base. She appreciates it but she’s still exhausted. She manages to avoid everyone else on her way to her room. 

She sleeps for 27 hours straight. Turns out her powers really don’t appreciate being used like that.

When she wakes up, she’s not convinced it wasn’t all a dream, until she glances down and sees Ward’s shirt. She crawls out of bed, trying not to jostle her ribs, and decides to take a shower. When she’s changing out of her clothes she finds a note in the pocket of the sweatpants. It says, “Keep the clothes.” She smiles. It’s good to know she hasn’t ruined everything between them, not when she’s finally found something akin to forgiveness for him.


	11. i never wanted this to end, can you forgive me friend?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wakes up the next morning in her own bed to a pounding headache and has to run to the toilet to puke her guts up. But all in all she considers the night a success. It was fun and hilarious and she’d forgotten how much she missed casually hanging out with her friends. Plus, she hadn’t even drunk called a certain former agent at three in the morning. Although, she did have to check her outgoing calls to be sure because she had blacked out. All’s well that ends well though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from forgive me friend by smith and thell
> 
> hope you guys like it!

The months until Jemma and Fitz’s wedding pass quickly. Of course, they still can’t have contact with their parents or family so they insist on a small service on base. Skye, as the maid of honor, sees it as her duty to throw Jemma an amazing bachelorette party beforehand though. It’s also doubling as a going away party for Kara, who’d volunteered for an undercover assignment in HYDRA that’s going to last a few months.

However, they all decide it’s not the best idea for SHIELD agents to get trashed outside the base, especially with very wanted Quake among them. So Skye decides to just take over the biggest lounge on the base and then throws up streamers and banners and stocks up on a lot of booze.

She probably didn’t even need the decorations because they’re barely sober enough to recognize them the whole night. It’s just her, Jemma, May, Kara, and Bobbi and her only regret is that she doesn’t remember more of May drunkenly reciting the SHIELD handbook with added commentary on every rule she thinks is bullshit and consequently, all the ones she’s broken, which is more than one might think. They also discover that Kara can sing and they all groan because of course she can. And Bobbi recites more than a bit of Shakespeare while dramatically acting out multiple parts in a scene. 

They also somehow manage to convince Skye to hack the cameras of the Avengers compound that’s not far from them, just so they can bet on how long it’ll be before she’s kicked out of the system. Jemma wins with a bet of two minutes. Skye thinks that’s pretty impressive if she says so herself, and she does, especially when she’s drunk. Coulson’s probably going to get an earful from Stark about rogue SHIELD agents hacking his system in the middle of the night. She’ll have to apologize to the director for that. No way is she apologizing to Stark though. He should get better security if he doesn’t want it hacked. She thinks she blacks out after that.

<<<>>>

She wakes up the next morning in her own bed to a pounding headache and has to run to the toilet to puke her guts up. But all in all, she considers the night a success. It was fun and hilarious and she’d forgotten how much she missed casually hanging out with her friends. Plus, she hadn’t even drunk called a certain former agent at three in the morning. Although, she did have to check her outgoing calls to be sure because she had blacked out. All’s well that ends well though.

A few weeks later Jemma and Fitz are married. Skye will admit that there are tears on her part but she’s certainly not alone. It’s beautiful and joyful and Skye’s so proud of how far they’ve all come.

And then they leave for their honeymoon in France with Hunter and Bobbi as guards. Kara goes undercover a few days later. 

Skye misses them immediately. She notices Kara’s absence around the base and on missions constantly. She misses seeing the cheerful agent in the lounge, humming and making waffles in the evening. She misses the way Kara’s quick to comfort her or call her out for bad decisions with no hesitation. Or the way Kara calls her for fashion advice early in the morning when she has a date. And, of course, Bobbi and Hunter are away with FitzSimmons. The base feels weirdly empty without their larger than life energy. And May and Coulson are busy most of the time. She can’t fault them for it though. They do have an international spy organization to run.

Logically, she knows Jemma and Fitz will be back in a week and a half but it feels different. She finds herself glad at least that they aren’t moving to one of the newer international bases Coulson’s been working to set up to counteract HYDRA. They’re staying at the base in France while they’re on their honeymoon but they’re coming back, and Skye’s thankful. But when they do return they’re moving to larger quarters in the aboveground part of the expanded base, farther away from Skye. And she realizes it’s only five minutes, but it’s enough. She knows things are changing. They’re starting a new part of their life, and it’s one she knows nothing about.

Maybe that’s why, after their joyful return, she walks up to the agent from her team, Turner, who’d asked her out when they’d first met six months ago, and asks him if the offer still stands. He says it does and so she has her first date in years at a restaurant in downtown Albany.

She groans and turns over in her bed the morning after, remembering why she always hates herself after impulse decisions. It started out fine but had quickly made her realize why she’d given up on dating these last few years. He’s a fine agent but she honestly doesn’t know if she can meet his eyes again when they see each other on the base after the awkwardness of last night. It wasn’t the worst date she’s ever had, by far, but the prolonged silences were not fun. She considers that maybe it’s just that it’s the first date. Those are known for being slightly awkward and she is very out of practice. But she knows they wouldn’t have worked out anyway. It’s for the better that she’d turned down a second date.

That night Jemma and Fitz invite her to their new quarters for a drink. She’s surprised to find it’s basically a small apartment, though she’s not sure what else she expected. They’re quick to berate her for rushing into dating again and she agrees they’re probably right. They quickly turn to laughing though when she recounts the awkward tale. And then they tell her stories of France and try to recall all the arguments Bobbi and Hunter had over stupid things while there. Though none of them had resulted in a breakup so things are improving on that front.

As they talk easily she’s reminded that they’re her closest friends and she really had missed them. She can’t help smiling when they glance at each other while telling a story as if they’re communicating without having to speak. They talk for hours, laughing, and just enjoying each other’s company.

Finally, Jemma can’t stop yawning. She’d gotten up early that morning to check on an experiment she’s running. Skye glances at her watch. It is almost midnight, but Fitz is in the middle of the story of the time one of their inventions didn’t quite work as intended in a test trial with some negative results for their tester… May. It’s as much a hilarious trainwreck as it sounds. Jemma’s quick to insist she’s lived it and certainly heard it enough times so she’s going to turn in but that Fitz should finish telling it, as somehow Skye’s never heard it before. 

Jemma stands and leans over, pressing a quick kiss to Fitz’s lips and smiling at Skye. Skye grins widely back and Jemma disappears into their bedroom.

By the time Fitz finishes the story Skye’s almost doubled over from contained laughter. Fitz is laughing quietly too, trying not to disturb Jemma in the other room. It takes them at least five minutes to calm down. Skye sighs, wiping at her eyes, and reaches for a couple of the empty beer bottles from the coffee table to recycle them. Fitz stops her when he speaks, “Hey, Skye?” 

She pauses, still grinning, and turns back to him, “Yeah?”

He clears his throat as if he’s rethinking whatever he wants to say. She checks his pulse and it’s slightly elevated in nervousness and her smile slowly falls, but then he speaks, “Have you mentioned the wedding to Ward yet?”

She blinks. Is that what he’s worried about? “Oh no, of course not. You don’t have to worry about that. It was just a mistake the first time.”

He shakes his head slightly, “No, no, I meant that he knows we were engaged so you should probably let him know we finally got married.”

She blinks again, surprised, “Oh,” is all she can say. 

He smiles at the look on her face, “Yeah, I’m just- I’m trying to put some things behind me. You know, starting a new chapter and all that. And I thought this would be a good place to start.”

She nods, starting to smile. That makes sense. “Has Jemma-”

He shakes his head, smile fading, “She hasn’t come around yet.”

She nods again, “Well, I’ll tell him next time I talk to him then.”

“Thank you,” he says and smiles. She stands then and crosses the room with the empty beer bottles in hand. She’ll toss them in the recycling bin on her way to her room. Fitz opens the door for her and she thanks him for the evening, hugging him tightly before stepping out into the hall. 

The beer bottles clink against each other as she walks and she can’t help but grin. It seems she’s not alone in forgiving Ward. Plus now she has an excuse to call him.


	12. haunted by the ghost of you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She pulls up his contact on her phone and hesitates. His name blinks up at her, bright in the darkness. It casts shadows across her room. If she looks maybe she can see him there, in the darkness, fixing her fighting stance, smiling at her across the room, crossing his arms, and shaking his head fondly. Then yelling, pointing a gun at her, breaking as she turns away. 
> 
> So she doesn’t look, doesn’t think about the shadows he seems to cast over her life, just presses call before she can think better of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from the night we met by lord huron
> 
> was feeling kinda down tonight and I feel like that comes through in the chapter. hope it fits and you guys like it tho

She waits a few days after her evening with Jemma and Fitz, giving Fitz the time to change his mind about Ward. But he doesn’t show any sign of rescinding his permission. In fact, he seems lighter, less burdened when he smiles at her. She wonders if that’s the effect forgiveness has.

So late one night when she hasn’t been able to sleep and she’s sitting with her computer on her bed, she decides to call him. She checks on his last reported location before she dials. It’s Berlin, 5 hours ahead. He’ll be up.

She pulls up his contact on her phone and hesitates. His name blinks up at her, bright in the darkness. It casts shadows across her room. If she looks maybe she can see him there, in the darkness, fixing her fighting stance, smiling at her across the room, crossing his arms, and shaking his head fondly. Then yelling, pointing a gun at her, breaking as she turns away. 

So she doesn’t look, doesn’t think about the shadows he seems to cast over her life, just presses call before she can think better of it.

Something in her immediately settles, quiets when she hears him answer, “Skye?” It’s soft, as it always is, and so, so him. No one else says her name as he does. She’s not sure what it is or why. She misses it.

They’ve spoken since her stop at his apartment in Indianapolis, but they’ve only been calls for tips or info. They haven’t truly talked as much as she’d have liked. But now that he’s listening she doesn’t know what she wants to say to him. So she just says what she’d promised to say first, hoping it’ll give her time to think, “Fitz wanted me to let you know that he and Jemma got married a few weeks ago.”

There’s silence and she can hear his breathing vibrating in her bones, more than through the phone’s speakers. It’s calming. 

Finally, “Tell them congratulations and… and I’m glad he wanted to tell me.” He sounds tired and sad and hopeful all in the same breath. 

She’s reminded of his lack of emotion when he’d been her SO. Except now she realizes it has never been a lack of emotion. It’s been too much, so much, bottled up so that it looked like emptiness. She thinks something must have cracked when he betrayed them because now the emotions seem to overflow into his voice. She wishes she could see if they’re reflected in his eyes. Does anyone else see this side of him? Would they have forgiven him if they had?

“Yeah,” is all she replies. She doesn’t know what else to say to him. That his clothes are washed and folded in her drawer? That she thought about calling him after her mess of a date weeks ago? That the day in his apartment when he told her he didn’t deserve forgiveness she’d realized she’d finally forgiven him? 

Her tongue won’t form the words to anything. She feels confused, lost.

She’s distracted from her thoughts by a ping from her computer. She raises her shoulder to keep the phone pressed to her ear and quickly opens the laptop. She hears another “Skye?” from Ward but she’s distracted by the information displayed on her screen. “Skye, what is it?” This time it’s more insistent and she blinks back to the conversation.

She only hesitates for a second before she tells him. He deserves to know. “It’s Kara. She’s missed her second check-in in a row and she’s not answering any attempts at communication.” In the second’s pause, she stands and grabs her go-bag from under her bed, then pulls her door open and heads down the dark hallways towards Coulson’s office.

All the emotion in his voice is gone when he says, “Skye, where is she?”

She swallows, “She was in Bucharest, undercover at a HYDRA base there. We’d had reports that they’d restarted the brainwashing program and… we wanted confirmation, and Coulson thought that since she’s gone through it, it might not work as well on her if she was discovered.” Her voice falters, “She volunteered, wanted to help the people who’d gone through it if the reports were true.”

She can tell he wants to say something about that but, ever the professional, he just says, “I can be there in two hours.”

“I can be there in ten hours, with a team. Just wait for us, Ward. We need a plan. HYDRA isn’t even recognized as a terrorist organization in Romania, which is why SHIELD hasn’t tried to go in with guns blazing yet.” She understands his fervor. Kara's her friend too. But she needs him to wait. It's not safe for him alone. She can hear him debating, even as she hears a car door slam in the background of his call. She sighs, and softer this time, “You can’t storm a whole HYDRA base by yourself, Grant.” Despite the situation, she almost freezes as his name leaves her lips. She can hear his breathing falter for a moment on the other end of the line too.

She decides to brush past it for the moment, not acknowledging it. There are more important things. Besides, he knows she’s right. She can picture him clenching the phone in his fist tightly but then his grip loosening as he sighs, anger deflating for a moment as he accepts her words. He whispers, “I know.” But then his voice hardens, “But if you’re not here in ten hours I’m not waiting, Skye.”

She nods, knowing he’s not bluffing, and repeats his words back to him, “I know.” She stops in front of Coulson’s door, hearing May’s voice on the other side. “I’ll call you back when we’re on the plane so we can plan.”

“Ok,” and then he’s gone.

She stuffs her phone back into her pocket before pushing the door open with one hand, her go-bag still dangling in the other. Coulson and May turn to her as she stands barefoot in the doorway, “So, who’s on my team?”


	13. we're holding on and letting go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe she misses him the way Kara does, but she can’t show it, can’t hug him to make sure they’re both alive. Not when everyone expects her to hate him, not when she can’t admit she doesn’t. She misses having him as a friend. And that’s not really a new realization but it’s different now when she knows they could be friends if only she’d let them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from holding on and letting go by ross copperman
> 
> sorry this one took longer than normal. i wasn't quite sure where i wanted it to go and then Halloween happened so i was busy. i also apologize because i cannot write action scenes lol
> 
> anyway, hope you enjoy!

No one wants to stay behind, not when it’s Kara, even though there’s a team heading out from their German base. So they end up with quite a few agents onboard the BUS, including the initial team. As they take off Skye realizes it’ll be the first time in years that her original team will be all reunited. It’s a bittersweet realization, knowing there’s a reason they haven’t been together all these years.

She calls Ward back a few hours later to go over information and inform him of the backup also coming from the German base. She tries to ignore the quiet anger in Jemma’s eyes as she puts him on speaker so he can fill in intel on their targeted base. It’s useful, seeing as he’s already there, staking it out, and as always his contributions are helpful. He’s able to give her enough information to hack her way into some of the HYDRA communications, to try to find anything about any newly acquired prisoners. She doesn’t have the time to hack into the full base system but she is able to provide a vague report referencing a prisoner scheduled for transport out of the city. 

Their best course of action is to take Kara from the transport instead of trying to take down or infiltrate the base, especially because they have no authority in Romania to fight HYDRA, which isn’t yet labeled as a terrorist organization.

Once all the planning is done Skye can feel the anxiety seeping into her mind. In all honesty, the mission shouldn’t be remotely hard, not with their team, and the easier target of a transport vehicle. But still, she can’t help but pace the length of the BUS, fiddling with the edge of her sleeve.

<<<>>>

They land a way outside of Bucharest, using the cloaking mechanism on the BUS to ensure their secrecy, from HYDRA and the government, and take a van towards the city, leaving Fitz and Jemma They’ve already mapped out their route so they can meet the other agents and Ward where they’ll intercept the prisoner transport outside the city before it reaches its jet.

They find the fleet of vehicles moving west right where they’d planned and May is quick to jerk the van into the other lane, hitting the first black vehicle in the side with a crunch and forcing it off the road, effectively blocking the small road to their private airstrip. Skye feels the vibrations of Ward’s car approaching the rear of the stopped fleet and she smiles before leaping out of the damaged van and stretching out a hand to another one of the cars which immediately flips over, landing in a heap on the grass on the side of the road. She ducks when she feels the vibrations of bullets starting to fly her way.

They make quick work of the remaining agents. She barely catches sight of Ward until the bullets have stopped and she’s pulling Kara from the large moving vehicle. Skye vibrates the cuffs off Kara’s wrists and the woman quickly throws them around Skye’s neck, smiling. And then she hears a loud and overjoyed “Grant!” right by her ear and she winces as Kara pulls back, looking over Skye’s shoulder and grinning widely, and then Kara’s rushing past her.

Skye turns and sees Ward dragging an unconscious body to the side of the road: they don’t have the authority to do anything else with them right now. He looks up immediately though when he hears his name and he quickly drops the body, his wide smile a twin to Kara’s as he catches sight of her. She laughs as she crashes into him, arms locking around his neck. His own quickly come up to wrap around her waist as he lifts her up and swings her around. His laugh rings out and they’re the picture of reunited lovers. Skye’s chest burns.

She tries to soothe the ache by assuring herself that they haven’t seen each other in years. They’re just good friends reuniting after a long absence. She sees him set her down and they immediately begin talking and laughing. She hasn’t seen Grant -no, Ward- laugh like that in years, at least not in front of her. He’s chuckled at her jokes but this is happiness she hasn’t seen on him before.

But why would he laugh around her? Why wouldn’t he be cautious of happiness around her, someone he still thinks hates him? Despite their ever-increasing amounts of phone-calls and her trust in him last time they met, she knows he’ll never suspect her hatred has dissipated unless she says it. His sense of self-worth is that low. And she’s yet to tell him she’s forgiven him. So their relationship has stayed in that same territory, of trust and uncertain friendship, for years.

She turns back to the cleanup, ignoring the joyful voices she can still hear ringing out from behind her, but it still stings.

Maybe she misses him the way Kara does, but she can’t show it, can’t hug him to make sure they’re both alive. Not when everyone expects her to hate him, not when she can’t admit she doesn’t. She misses having him as a friend. And that’s not really a new realization but it’s different now when she knows they could be friends if only she’d let them.

And she knows she’s forgiven him, but maybe the reason she hasn’t told him yet is that she hasn’t forgiven herself, for letting herself move past the things that happened, the things they both did. Some part of her feels like she should hate him, that she’s weak for missing him. She faintly hears Kara saying goodbye behind her. Soon Ward will leave, on his way back to Germany, and they’ll resume their distant relationship. A second chance at friendship is walking out of her life once again. Does she want things to always stay the same, to hear his voice once a month and forever wonder if they could ever have mended things? She finds herself shaking her head.

She’s not weak for forgiving him. Forgiveness is strength. And maybe she can try to forgive herself next.

She pauses when she senses Kara approaching her. She’s still beaming as she grabs Skye’s hands, “Grant’s in a bit of a better place now so we’re going to try to stay in touch. I just wanted to thank you for rescuing me and for bringing him back into my life.”

Something in Skye’s stomach drops a bit at that. She’s not sure why. She smiles shakily, “I’m happy for you guys. You deserve someone who adores you.”

Kara throws back her head, laughing loudly, and drops Skye’s hands. A few agents turn at the sound but quickly go back to their business when they realize it’s just Kara. Skye blinks, confused and Kara finally stops laughing and says, “Grant’s like my older brother.” 

Skye’s heart jumps and she flushes, “Oh, sorry,” is all she can get out. She’s not sure why she’s so relieved by that. She clears her throat and ignores Kara’s pointed look, “Well, I was just going to go talk to him so…” 

Kara smiles widely and nods, turning towards May and Coulson conversing by their beat-up van. As Skye walks past her Kara calls out, “He missed you too,” and Skye flushes even more.

<<<>>>

He’s disappeared from her line of sight while she’d talked to Kara, but she rounds one of the HYDRA vehicles and finds him discussing the best pieces of tech Fitz has made with a younger agent. She can’t wait to tell Fitz about it. She also can’t help rolling her eyes, especially because the agent seems to be hanging on Ward’s every word. “Mind if I cut in here,” she says, walking up to the two.

Grant had seen her coming a long time ago but the boy jumps, surprised, and quickly excuses himself, blushing furiously. Grant’s fond amusement is clear as the boy scurries off. Then he turns his attention to Skye and the smile slips off his face, replaced by careful neutrality, as if he’s unsure what she’s going to say or if she's going to berate him for showing happiness, and is preparing himself for a blow. Skye, and maybe Kara, are the only ones who ever seem to notice his subliminal damage. Skye wants to shoot Garrett for making Grant this unsure of himself. And maybe her actions years ago hadn’t helped.

She can’t stand here forever though, hidden from the rest of the world behind this van, “I just wanted to say thank you.”

He seems to deflate, some of the tension leaving his face. He smiles hesitantly, “Of course. It’s Kara.”

Skye sighs, looking down at her boots, “I know. Just… thank you. For everything, Grant.”

He just says, “Yeah.” 

Silence fills the space after the word. It’s so empty and full and Skye knows what she needs to say but there are so many things swirling through the air she doesn’t know which to reach for first. If she acknowledges everything in her head right now she'll never be the same. She’s not quite ready for that. So she says the only thing she can, “I know you’re not looking for it, but… I forgive you, Grant… and maybe more importantly… I understand.” Now, she just hopes she can forgive herself. She feels like sobbing. Instead, she looks up.

Grant’s not looking at her. He’s staring off to the side. And so they stand there, the bustle of agents around them, silence between them. Finally, he looks back at her and there’s a sheen to his eyes. The water turns his grey eyes silver. It feels like change… It feels like hope.

Something shifts as he whispers “thank you” into the silence. The words are tangible. Skye feels their vibrations flutter out and then fade, minuscule, unimportant, next to the rushing of the rivers miles beneath them and the billions of pulses around the globe. And yet, Skye doesn’t think she’s ever felt those as deep in her bones as she has this.

She doesn’t allow herself to think any further as she takes a step forward and wraps her arms around his waist, burying her head in his shoulder and breathing him in. He freezes against her but then his arms come up around her shoulders, engulfing her, and he’s warm and strong and she’s missed this, missed him. 

She’s not sure how long they stand there before she hears them calling for her from further down the road. He pulls back first, nodding towards the waiting cars, “You better go.”

She breathes in deeply and nods, smiling sadly, “I’ll see you soon, yeah?”

He smiles back at her and whispers, “Yeah,” before nudging her towards the cars.

As she walks down the road, past the destroyed vans and pile of ICERed agents on the grass, she glances back. He’s standing by the van, looking strange and intimidating to anyone else, but she sees the bittersweet contentment on his face. She thinks it might be reflected on her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm really enjoying writing this so I've been thinking that when this story ends I might make it a series so i can write some of their interactions from Ward's perspective, just for fun and practice. This is just an idea if I have time and motivation once I'm done with this one, so no guarantees it'll happen, but if it did would you guys be interested in reading that? please lmk. thanks again for all your support guys!


	14. missing him is dark grey, all alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is this what little ten-year-old Skye envisioned for her future self: a single bed in a dorm room in a secret base? Of course not, but plans change. And so do people. She’s been so many different people since then. But maybe the person she’s become still wants more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from red by taylor swift
> 
> ik this isn't very long but with school and the election I've been pretty stressed. hopefully there'll be more soon but in the meantime have this. i hope it helps take your mind off stuff if just for a little while. enjoy!

Everyone’s overjoyed at Kara’s return. Skye watches her run down the cargo ramp to hug Bobbi and Hunter, who’d been on a mission when they’d left to rescue her. The other agents start to trickle past her where she stands at the top of the BUS’s ramp. Jemma and Fitz walk past her and Fitz rests a hand on her shoulder for a moment, shooting her a questioning glance, which she ignores, before following Jemma out of the plane. Kara leaves the hangar with Bobbi and Hunter, Jemma and Fitz trailing after. 

Still, Skye stands looking down at the emptying hangar. She can hear other agents moving about the hangar, feels their pulses but… she feels alone like she hasn’t in years, like maybe when she hugged Grant she hadn’t gotten all of herself back. 

She’s distracted by Coulson’s hand on her shoulder. She looks to the side and sees him smiling softly, May standing next to him, “Get some sleep, Skye. We’ll talk later,” he says, squeezing her shoulder.

She smiles softly, “Yeah,” and shakes her head, trying to clear some of her haze. She smiles at May as she heads down the ramp and her former SO smiles back, almost sadly. She leaves May and Coulson in the hangar and slowly makes her way through the hallways, past agents, and around corners until she reaches her room. 

She pushes open the door and pauses on the threshold, flicking on the light. Everything’s exactly the way she left it: computer on the bed, sheets pulled back, a report open on her desk. It feels smaller though… like she’d left and realized the world is bigger than these four walls, which is crazy because no one knows better than her how big the world is. She can feel it in her bones at all times. But maybe she thought there’d be more to her life by now.

She walks in and sets down her bag, kicking off her shoes, and sitting on the edge of her bed. Is this what little ten-year-old Skye envisioned for her future self: a single bed in a dorm room in a secret base? Of course not, but plans change. And so do people. She’s been so many different people since then. But maybe the person she’s become still wants more.

She sighs and rummages under her pillow for her pajamas before she realizes they’re dirty and groans. She pulls herself over to her dresser and pushes aside clothes searching for her spare sleep clothes. But then her hand brushes a piece of clothing and she recognizes it against her fingers. She pulls it out and it’s Grant’s black t-shirt. It still smells like him. She searches until she finds his sweatpants and she grabs those too before reaching for her towel and entering the bathroom, intent on showering before falling into her bed.

Her mind wanders as she massages shampoo into her hair and she lets it. Of course, it wanders right back to Grant Ward. She’d felt his pulse jump when she’d hugged him. She wonders how long it’s been since someone touched him with kindness before she and Kara hugged him. 

As she rinses out the shampoo she thinks back to Coulson’s small gestures of kindness earlier, a hand on her shoulder, a reminder to take care of herself. She knows she gets wrapped up in her work sometimes, in her need to help others. Without her family, she’d sometimes forget to sleep or eat. There’s been more than one occasion when Fitz has stolen her computer to make her eat something or May’s found her nodding off in the lounge trying to go over some reports only to drag her to bed. She’s thankful for them, but she can’t help wondering if there’s someone who does that for Grant, someone who’s there for him. She doesn’t think so. He’s never been one to open up and she knows he doesn’t value himself. His casual ‘I’m expendable’ from god, years ago, floats to the front of her mind. As she climbs out of the shower, she resolves that if they’re going to try this whole friendship thing, that’s got to change.

She feels content in her decision as she changes into her, well Grant’s, clothes. They’re as soft as she remembered them. She wraps her arms around herself and closes her eyes. She can almost imagine she’s back standing on that warm Romanian road, wrapped in his arms.

Her room greets her when she opens her eyes and she sighs. Maybe she misses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally made a carrd which has links to all my tumblrs, including my skyeward one, so you can find that [here](https://infoabtmaddie.carrd.co/#) if you're interested. thanks for all your support guys!


	15. there's a heart now where there used to be a ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The smooth concrete is cold against her feet as she walks but she barely notices. She feels miles away, her thoughts circling around her rediscovered friendship with Grant, plus her decision to watch out for him and try to figure him out. How is she supposed to do that if they barely ever see each other?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from freaking me out by ava max
> 
> man this week has been something else but here you guys go. hope you like it :)

Her room is still too small when she wakes the next morning. But she’s warm, wrapped in her blanket and reminded of Grant’s arms, so she ignores the feeling. Finally, her need for caffeine overpowers her need for warmth and she manages to crawl out of bed just after seven am. Coulson wants to talk to her later today but she has the rest of the day off to rest. So she doesn’t bother changing before she stumbles down the hall to the lounge to have a cup of coffee.

The lounge isn’t empty, a few agents she doesn’t know at the table. She knows she doesn’t look the most professional in her borrowed clothes that are too large, her bare feet, and her tousled hair but she doesn’t much mind. It’s quiet and her mug is warm in her hands as she leans back against the counter, closing her eyes and yawning, allowing herself to savor the caffeine and the calm morning. The agents’ pulses are steady and their low chatter is soothing as she takes another sip of her coffee.

Skye finds herself leaving the lounge and walking the halls back to her room barefoot. She walks slowly, not in any hurry, with mug in hand. Agents intent on their destinations pass by, not paying her any mind. The smooth concrete is cold against her feet as she walks but she barely notices. She feels miles away, her thoughts circling around her rediscovered friendship with Grant, plus her decision to watch out for him and try to figure him out. How is she supposed to do that if they barely ever see each other?

She reaches her door and pushes it open, settling in at her desk with her feet pulled up under her, and opens her computer. She takes another sip of her coffee and pulls up Grant’s file. He’s certainly proved himself since the HYDRA ordeal and maybe… Maybe there’s enough goodwill to invite him back as a consultant. She can’t help her smile as she thinks of it. Not all the time, of course, just a few missions a year, ones that he’s close to or has intel on. She’d have to run it past Coulson first of course. But the more she thinks about it the more she thinks it’s a good idea.

She mentally runs through her team and their reactions before she proposes the idea. Kara will be overjoyed. She thinks Coulson will be onboard and May is reasonable, she’s seen what Grant’s done for them and she’s not one to hold unneeded grudges. Fitz has forgiven him and it isn’t personal for Bobbi and Hunter. No, the only one she needs to worry about is Jemma. Hopefully, Fitz can help on that front.

So she smiles happily, sipping her coffee, and spends the few hours before her meeting with Coulson filling out reports, not even bothering to change out of Grant’s comfortable clothes.

<<<>>>

She doesn’t give him a chance to speak when she enters his office, instead launching into the speech she’d practiced on her way through the halls, “I think we should bring Grant on as a consultant on relevant cases. He’s already giving us valuable intel and he’s a skilled asset that we should be utilizing for SHIELD. Besides, he’s already worked with us on a few successful missions in the past years.” Skye thinks she does a good job of keeping any emotion out of her voice or features, instead focusing only on the facts. But the way Coulson’s looking at her makes her wonder if he sees through her anyway. Too late she realizes she’d called him Grant instead of Ward. She resists the urge to shift her feet or fidget with the pockets of her, wait, Grant’s sweatpants.

Coulson’s searching look only lasts a few seconds longer and then he smiles and shakes his head, standing up, “Why do you think I wanted to talk to you? Let him know, if he’s willing, that we’ll work with him. And I’m appointing you as our official Ward liaison unless you’d rather someone else-”

She cuts him off, smiling and taking a step forward, “I’ve got it.”

He nods and smiles again, softer this time, “I know. I trust you, Skye.” It sounds almost like pride and she doesn’t know why she feels like tearing up… except she does know. 

She likes to think she’s figured enough of herself out to know that one. It’s just he’s so close to her father, closer than her birth father ever was, and pride from a parental figure is a relatively new experience. So she doesn’t stop herself from rounding his desk and throwing her arms around his shoulders for a moment. Then she pulls back and smiles, “Thanks.”

<<<>>>

She hurries out of his office, lamenting that she’d left her phone in her room when she runs into Kara. She starts walking past her, smiling widely, when she pauses. She debates for a moment before pivoting and walking after Kara. She catches up to her and slows her pace so they can walk side by side. Kara’s grin widens, “What’s up, Skye?”

Skye can’t help matching her grin, “Well, Coulson just approved bringing Grant on as a consultant for some cases.” 

Kara’s grin is blinding as she stops in the middle of the hallway and throws her arms around Skye, “That’s amazing, Skye!”

Skye’s quick to return the hug, throwing apologetic looks to the agents passing around them. No one seems to mind but she still feels a bit bad. As Kara pulls back Skye feels her smile fall a bit, “I know you were close and you’re back in touch so I thought I’d let you call him and tell him the good news.”

Kara considers her for less than a second before she’s smiling wide again, “You should call him.”

Skye feels her smile slowly creeping back onto her features, but “Are you sure?”

Kara laughs, “I talked to him this morning.” She squeezes Skye’s hand and turns, starting to walk in the direction of wherever she was headed before Skye stopped her, but before she rounds the corner she calls out, smirking, “Besides, it’s you he wants to talk to.”

Skye feels her smile widen and she doesn’t even try to contain it as she turns back to her room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just wanted to thank you guys again for your amazing comments and support. they're really keeping me going in this weird time and keeping me motivated and invested in this story which I'm really enjoying writing and sharing with you all. you guys are amazing!


	16. you're only happy when you're sorry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her phone is warm in her hand and she sits up to lean against the wall, legs crossed, “Not quite, but it is good news.” She pauses but he doesn’t respond immediately so she continues, “Coulson’s agreed to bring you on as a consultant for any relevant cases, if you want to that is.”
> 
> Her last words drift into emptiness. She can hear his steady breathing over the line. Her smile slips away into the silence between them and she’s hesitant when she asks, “Grant?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from colors by halsey
> 
> this is really short but today has been crazy. couldn't help feeling very relieved and happy today with all the election news but I'm glad it's mostly over. hope you guys like this short little conversation :)

As soon as her door clicks shut behind her she’s pulling up Grant’s number. Her finger hovers over the call button as she contemplates the contact name. It still says Ward. It doesn’t quite feel right anymore. She reasons that she’s already started calling him Grant, so it just makes sense to change it as she types in the new contact. Then she presses call and flops, very ungracefully, onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling, phone pressed to her ear.

He picks up on the second ring and he doesn’t sound concerned, like he used to when she only used his number for emergencies, just calm and happy, “Hey, Skye.” Maybe he’s happy to hear from her.

She can’t help grinning when she says, “Hey, Grant.”

She can hear his amused exhale and picture his smirk as he speaks, “Is this a social call?”

Her phone is warm in her hand and she sits up to lean against the wall, legs crossed, “Not quite, but it is good news.” She pauses but he doesn’t respond immediately so she continues, “Coulson’s agreed to bring you on as a consultant for any relevant cases, if you want to that is.”

Her last words drift into emptiness. She can hear his steady breathing over the line. Her smile slips away into the silence between them and she’s hesitant when she asks, “Grant?”

He sighs over the line, “I just… I don’t know if that's such a good idea.” She hadn’t been prepared for this. “I’m sure no one at SHIELD wants to have to deal with monitoring me.”

This is ridiculous, but it’s also why she proposed this idea in the first place. He doesn’t see everything he’s done for them… for her, and she wants to change that. “Grant, you’ve inspired a lot more goodwill with SHIELD in the past five years than you think. We’re not planning on monitoring you.” She smiles a bit, “Just don’t betray us again,” she adds teasingly.

He doesn’t laugh. “I don’t want to cause problems. May and Jemma-”

She shakes her head and cuts him off before he can start listing reasons he hasn’t earned their forgiveness, “May doesn’t hold a grudge and Jemma will come around. Besides, you won’t even be working in close contact with her most of the time. Plus, Kara was overjoyed to hear about it.”

He sighs again, “Skye…”

Her grip tightens on the phone, “If you can’t find any other reason to, just do it for me then, Grant.”

There’s silence again. Her pulse is loud in her ears as she waits. Finally, he exhales, “Alright, fine.” He chuckles, “You’re persuasive when you want to be.”

She grins and relaxes her grip on the phone, “I know.” She feels warmth spread in her chest and she allows herself to remember Grant’s arms around her. She already misses him. But now, she knows she’ll see him again. “This one might not have been a social call but you better expect some that are soon,” she jokes.

She can sense his smile as he says, “I look forward to it,” and it feels genuine, as if he really does look forward to mundane talk with her.

“Me too,” is all she can reply, and it’s true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a skyeward playlist on spotify. it's kinda all over the place genre-wise but they're all songs that remind me of grant or skye or their relationship. if you guys want me to link it in the next update just lmk :)


	17. stay with me a little longer, I will wait for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She glances at the overcast sky, painted in blues and greys, and then she looks to Grant. He’s already looking at her and she sees the oncoming storm reflected in his eyes. His gaze quickly darts away but she walks a step closer to him for the whole walk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from war of hearts by ruelle
> 
> sorry this update took a bit longer. it's been a rough few days but in good news this one might be the longest chapter I've posted for this fic so I hope that makes up for the delay.
> 
> This chapter is kind of a collection of moments over two years. they're all measured time-wise by the number of months from the end of the last chapter.
> 
> and as promised [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ogK0TNERezfv7ooClf1SR?si=CKaCHlVsQl6iEVSwW9eP0w) is the link to my skyeward spotify playlist. lmk what you think :)
> 
> hope you guys enjoy!

<<<>>>

  


**5 months after Grant Ward becomes a consultant for SHIELD**

  


“Clara, you’re looking absolutely stunning tonight,” he smirks as he twirls her around the dance floor.

  


She smiles charmingly back at him, hissing quietly through gritted teeth, “I’m going to kill you, Michael.”

  


His smile widens, “You’re right, I love this dance as well. And you’re oh so good at it” It’s a testament to his far superior dancing skills that he doesn’t falter when Skye pointedly steps on his foot with her heel. Well, it may not have been purposeful, but she’s not going to admit that and certainly nor to him.

  


He spins her around one last time before pulling her off the dance floor. She almost stumbles into a balding man standing at the edge of the dancing, but Grant tugs on her hand, pulling her around him at the last moment and towards the bar on the far side of the large, ornate ballroom. 

  


She’s still glaring daggers when he pushes a drink into her hands. She’s not even truly angry, but she’ll be damned if she lets Grant drag her out there without warning again. 

  


“Wasn’t that fun, Clara?” He’s still smirking, and she resists the urge to discreetly elbow him in the stomach, instead taking a sip of whatever he’s handed her to cover up her small smile. It burns as it goes down. They’re definitely not serving the cheap stuff.

  


To be fair, it wasn’t the worst experience of her life. Grant’s certainly not a bad dance partner, but she doesn’t have even a basic ability to ballroom dance, especially not in heels. It had provided the best excuse to scope out the room, though, and so Michael, as was his cover tonight, had swept her off to the dance floor where she’d first almost tripped on her long red dress and then proceeded to stumble continually. She feels bad that the SHIELD agents in the van outside had to watch it through the camera in one of Grant’s suit buttons.

  


Though one benefit of tonight, she’s looking forward to being able to keep is her dress. It’s a gorgeous bright red, and she saw the way Grant’s mouth opened imperceptibly when he first saw her in it, with her hair in a fancy updo and matching red lipstick that she likes to think compliments her eyes. He was quick to recover from his stunned silence, but it had sent a warm shiver down her spine regardless. To be fair, he hadn’t looked bad either in his suit, with his smirk and the grey at his temples. She knows he could dye it, but he seems to be aware that it certainly doesn’t detract from his features. He almost looks the picture of the spies from Bond movies.

  


Besides, it’s been so long since she’s had an opportunity to dress up. Her closet is full of the tactical black she continues to mock Grant for. It’s just less effort when you’re a spy. But she admits it is nice to feel elegant and know she looks good, at least for the evening. 

  


She takes another sip of her drink and feels Grant’s arm slide around her waist as he leans down to whisper in her ear. She doesn’t even flinch at his proximity, which is something she would never have imagined a few years ago. “The two waiters to the left are armed.”

  


She snags his tie with her free hand and pulls him down even further, smirking as she whispers into his ear in the most monotonous voice she can muster, “No shit,” and releases him. He lets out a barely constrained laugh, and the man at the bar next to them shoots them a glance. Skye blinks innocently back before grabbing Grant’s hand and dragging him after the waiters heading towards one of the side doors to the ballroom.

  


She makes sure to tug at Grant’s tie and let her hands roam over his stomach, the picture of the newly married couple they’re undercover as who can’t get enough of each other. It certainly helps that she can feel his toned stomach through his dress shirt.

  


His hands are firmly planted on her hips as they stumble out of the main hall into an empty hallway, usually reserved for staff. Skye throws back her head in a fake laugh to catch the attention of one of the waiters. One of them turns, muttering something to the other woman and approaches them warily, “I’m sorry, sir, madam, but you’re not allowed-” Before he can finish his sentence, he’s falling to the ground, a well-placed blow from Grant all it takes. All pretense gone, the other waiter down the hall reaches for her gun, but Skye throws out her hand, sending out a low-level pulse that doesn’t fail to knock the woman into the wall behind her before she slumps down unconscious.

  


She stalks purposefully down the hall, Grant at her back, and kicks off her heels before rummaging in the woman’s coat for a keycard she knows is there. She grabs it triumphantly and moves to one side of the door the waiters had been heading towards. Grant takes his place on the other side, and she nods. She swipes the card, and he pushes the door open, entering first, Skye close on his heels. They hadn’t managed to smuggle any weapons like ICERs in, but it doesn’t matter much. They’re both weapons in their own right.

  


They finally force their way out of the building, thumb drive in hand, and throw themselves into their car, Grant pulling out behind another SHIELD vehicle as they maneuver through the streets of Amsterdam. “You know, HYDRA really should have better security for their top-secret business deals,” Skye remarks as they follow the zigzagging SHIELD van towards their flight out of the country.

  


“I don’t know much that could stand up to the terrible dance moves of Clara Taylor,” he says, shooting her his trademark smirk. This time she actually does smack his chest. “Hey, don’t hurt the driver, or do you want me to drive us into oncoming traffic?”

  


“Better than this,” Skye mumbles, but she’s smiling as she turns to look out the window.

  


She hears Grant exclaim in dismay and turns back to look at him, concern bubbling up. Had he been injured? “There’s blood on my shirt. Do you think I can get this dry-cleaned?” He looks up at her earnestly. 

  


Her face goes blank, her mouth hanging open a centimeter. They stare at each other for a moment and then finally, “Jesus Christ, Grant.” He bursts out laughing at the unamused look on her face. “I swear to god, Grant, don’t make me shoot you again.” That only makes him laugh more, and she rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling too. It’s nice to hear him laugh.

  


<<<>>>

  


**7 months after Grant Ward becomes a consultant for SHIELD**

  


Emma’s finally coming back to the base, and Skye’s waiting, foot tapping, at the edge of the hangar. She’s already talked to Coulson, and they’ve agreed that the extra training is good, but that’s as far as it goes for now. The academy sent along the girl’s records from her time there, and it’s clear she’s gotten control of her abilities. 

  


Skye’s already met with a sweet couple who’ve agreed to foster the 17-year old for a year. They’ve been fully debriefed on Emma’s abilities, and Skye admires that they still agreed to take her in. She wishes she’d had that. Her thoughts drift to Grant. How would he have changed if he’d had that chance at love? 

  


In fact, Grant had played a large role in helping her realize no one should be joining SHIELD this young. She’d mentioned her hesitation, and Grant had pointed out when he’d been recruited. Immediately after that mission, she’d called Coulson and arranged to meet with potential foster parents.

  


She’s distracted from her musings by a small plane slowly descending into the hangar. It’s not long before the ramp opens, and she sees Emma make her way down. Skye crosses the hangar to meet her at the bottom of the plane. The girl seems more sure of herself, her grip on her bag unshaking. Her hair is up, as most agents usually wear it, but she’s in her own clothes, not the academy uniform. She’s already been informed of her destination, so that makes sense.

  


Skye smiles up at her, and Emma smiles back, stopping in front of her. Skye can’t help it when she pulls the young girl into her arms. Emma laughs and hugs her back. Skye pulls back to look at her, “So, you all set?”

  


Emma sighs, “Yeah, I just wish I could join SHIELD now.”

  


Skye wraps an arm around her shoulders, “I know but trust me; this is for the best. You’re still young, and you deserve to experience that. Feel free to come back, just… you know, take a few years, see the world.” 

  


“I’ll miss you, though,” Emma says as they start walking to the side of the hangar where there’s a car waiting.

  


Skye smiles down at her and feels a sense of pride and a sudden rush of sadness, “I’m only a phone call away.” She winks conspiratorially, “I’ll miss you too.” And she will, but Emma deserves what childhood she can still have. Skye only wishes she could give one back to Grant too.

  


<<<>>>

  


**10 months after Grant Ward becomes a consultant for SHIELD**

  


Skye’s convinced Kara’s playing matchmaker and trying to spark something between her and Grant. 

  


Kara had joined her team on one of her missions with Grant, this time in Toronto. The mission had mostly been fine. It was just a small team for reconnaissance on some HYDRA activity in the area. They’d swiftly taken down the targets and ascertained some valuable info about the location of one of their larger bases. Skye had organized the SHIELD pickup of their captured targets and returned to Kara and Grant, whispering furiously next to their stakeout van. 

  


She can’t quite make out what they’re saying, but as she approaches, one eyebrow uplifted, Kara turns to her with a cheery “Skye!” and beckons her over. If she thought Grant was capable of blushing, she thinks he would be doing it right now. As it is, he’s still managing to look slightly uncomfortable. Skye realizes why as soon as she reaches them because Kara says something about cleanup taking a little longer than normal and the agents being hungry. Then she’s pushing both of them to the sidewalk with directions to a cafe down the road and instructions to pick up lunch.

  


Skye blinks as soon as Kara leaves. The woman sure works quickly. Skye’s still not sure what just happened, but Grant’s rubbing the back of his neck and looking at the ground sheepishly, “We don’t have to go. Kara can send someone else.” 

  


Skye contemplates this for a second. This will be the first time she spends with Grant outside of a mission or danger in almost seven years, but she can’t deny that she’s hungry, and according to Kara’s directions, it’s only five minutes down the road. Besides, she doesn’t mind his company. So she grabs his arm and pulls him along for a few seconds until he realizes what they’re doing and follows after her. She drops her arm but flexes her fingers at the loss of his heat that she can feel even through his leather jacket. 

  


Their walk is mostly silent, and it’s a little awkward, but then she points out a cute dress in a clothing store across the street, and by the time they reach the cafe, it’s more comfortable, and they’re both smiling softly.

  


The cafe is tiny, and Skye doesn’t even know where Kara found out about it. It’s called Ella’s cafe, and when Skye pushes in the door, a tiny bell rings. It’s surprisingly busy and loud for its size, so Skye has high expectations. They step into line, and that’s when she realizes Kara told them to pick up lunch for the agents but neglected to tell them orders of any sort. She says something to Grant and steps outside to call her.

  


“Kara, what does everyone want from the cafe?” Grant shoots her a glance through the glass windows, and she smiles at him. His answering grin almost makes her miss Kara’s response.

  


“Oh, actually turns out the rest of the team ordered some pizza while I was talking to Grant, so we’re fine. But you two take your time. There’s no hurry, still some cleanup to finish, and we have to wait for the prisoner transport. Plus, the team needs to eat. So enjoy yourselves.”

  


Skye doesn’t even know how to respond to Kara’s astounding lack of subtlety. “Kara…”

  


The agent just laughs, “Enjoy yourselves. You both deserve a break,” and hangs up.

  


Skye stands there for a moment, the breeze blowing her short hair into her face before she shakes her head, smiling and tucks it back behind her ear. Grant shoots her a questioning glance as she walks back inside, and she just shakes her head and joins him back in the line and quickly explains. His only response is, “Oh, Kara,” and Skye can’t help but agree. But nothing will come of Kara’s matchmaking. They’re both long past that, so she just shakes her head and orders lunch.

  


It’s an enjoyable experience. They talk and laugh and watch the people walking by outside, guessing at their occupations based on their appearance. Of course, they have no way to confirm who’s right, so by the end of lunch, Skye has proclaimed herself the winner regardless. Grant just laughs and takes a sip of his coffee, his eyes scanning her smiling face like he’s trying to memorize it.

  


By the time they leave, the temperature’s dropped, and Skye pulls open the door and immediately starts shivering in the sudden blast of cold. The breeze that was so nice an hour ago is now starting to numb her fingers. Grant quickly shrugs off his leather jacket and drapes it around her shaking frame. She grabs at the edges and pulls it tight around her as they walk back. It’s warm with his body heat, and it’s a great shield against the wind. 

  


She glances at the overcast sky, painted in blues and greys, and then she looks to Grant. He’s already looking at her, and she sees the oncoming storm reflected in his eyes. His gaze quickly darts away, but she walks a step closer to him for the whole walk. 

  


He doesn’t ask for his jacket back.

  


<<<>>>

  


**12 months after Grant Ward becomes a consultant for SHIELD**

  


“Fitz, I want you on this mission. Jemma can handle things here for a few days, and we’re going to need you on-site. You’re the only one who understands their new cloaking tech,” Coulson says, sitting down at his desk.

  


“Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement, sir. We don’t really understand-” Fitz starts, but Skye nudges him lightly with her elbow. He glances at her, confused, and she widens her eyes, glancing at the other agents. He finally seems to catch onto the fact it’s not quite the right time for a long-winded scientific explanation. “Um, right, sir. Happy to go.” Skye catches Coulson’s eye as he dismisses them, and they share a fond smile.

  


The agents file out into the hallway and break apart into smaller groups, chatting and going to grab their bags. Skye turns after Fitz and takes a few quick steps to catch up to him. He’s absorbed by whatever designs he’s pulling up on his tablet, but she speaks anyway, pulling him from his focus, “We’re meeting up with Grant for this one. I know you said you forgave him, but that’s a long way from wanting to work with him. I can always ask Coulson to send someone else from the science division.” 

  


His eyes flick to hers, almost incredulously, “SHIELD needs me on this mission. Coulson was right: I’m the one that knows this tech best. Besides, you trust Ward, right?” She nods quickly, and he smiles. “I may not trust him fully yet, but I trust you, Skye. Thank you for looking out for me.” He taps her arm lightly in his casual way of showing physical affection, and she stops walking, leaving her in the hallway as he rounds the corner, his focus returned to his tablet.

  


The mission goes off without a hitch, which is unusual for them. Skye can probably count on one hand how many times their missions have gone according to plan. Fitz was right; they had needed him. He’d been able to override the cloaking mechanisms so Skye and her team could locate the base’s main database. Skye had been quick to scrub the list of Inhumans Judgement had stolen from a SHIELD base in California and completely fry the entire database. Then they’d been able to turn the majority of militants there over to local authorities with only a few casualties on their side. She suspects Grant had played a large role in her team’s lack of injury.

  


Now Skye’s finishing up her conversation with the chief of police across the street from the base, directing him to SHIELD’s line for Inhuman related issues if there are any problems with the anti-Inhuman militants they’ve arrested. It’s basically her work number as she’s basically in charge of all things Inhuman at SHIELD. 

  


Right now, she’s more worried about where Judgement got the cloaking technology. If HYDRA’s started selling off experimental tech to lower level militia groups and crime syndicates, SHIELD’s job is going to be harder until they can finally eradicate HYDRA. They’ve been making quite a bit of progress with it, but this could set them back. Maybe that’s what HYDRA’s counting on. If SHIELD is distracted by other criminals with destructive tech, HYDRA can rebuild more.

  


She moves away from the captain, back to their SHIELD vans, where her team is sorting things out and cleaning up minor scrapes. She finds Fitz packing up some of his equipment into the back of one of the vans, and to her surprise, Grant is helping with him, and they seem to be conversing civilly. She doesn’t know why she’s surprised, though: Fitz is the most kindhearted person she knows. She stops a few feet away, on the other side of the van, just out of their sight. She’s reminded of when she found Grant praising Fitz’s inventions to another agent. Fitz had flushed when she’d told him about it.

  


“Did you ever make that holotable easier to use?” Grant asks, and Skye almost snorts.

  


“I think it was just you that had a problem with that,” Fitz laughs.

  


Grant scoffs, “Hey, Coulson couldn’t work it either. Don’t tell me he finally figured it out. That might damage my self-esteem beyond repair.”

  


“Alright, then I won’t tell you that,” Fitz smirks. Grant just groans and shoves the last of Fitz’s equipment back into the van. “Thanks for your help, Ward,” Fitz pauses for a moment, and Skye can feel his pulse flutter. “I know Skye already told you, but I wanted you to hear it from me too: I forgive you, Ward, and I know nothing will ever make what you did okay, but I’m willing to try to move past it. I know the things you’ve done for us since, and I, um, I appreciate it.” He holds out his hand. Grant hesitates for a moment, and Skye likes to think she knows him well enough to read the shock and emotion in the set of his shoulder. But then he raises his hand and shakes Fitz’s. The smaller man offers him a bright smile and then moves around the other side of the van and climbs in.

  


Grant’s silent for another moment, and then he turns to face Skye, who still hasn’t moved. He smirks, but it’s weaker than normal, and she can tell Fitz’s forgiveness has shaken him. “You just gonna spy from back there? Kinda creepy if you ask me. Plus, not your best spy work.”

  


She chuckles, content to joke with him, and not mention their conversation, “Better than yours at least.”

  


He crosses his arms, “Hey, you have no evidence for that.”

  


She just smiles and shrugs, stepping forward to hug him before she leaves. His arms are quicker to wrap around her this time as if he’s not as surprised by her displays of kindness. She’s happy at the small improvements and can’t help smiling into his shoulder.

  


<<<>>>

  


**12 months and 1 week after Grant Ward becomes a consultant for SHIELD**

  


After a particularly long conversation with Grant one day, not long after their mission with Fitz, Skye realizes she hasn’t spoken to Jemma about him since their not so great conversation almost two years ago. Maybe Fitz has gotten her to come around. Skye winces, knowing Jemma probably not. She can hold a grudge like no one Skye’s ever met. And she knows the grudge isn’t on Jemma’s behalf. It would have been easier if it was, but no, it’s a grudge on Fitz’s behalf. Jemma feels guilty that she left Fitz after his brain damage became apparent, and she blames Grant for causing their rift. Skye doesn’t deny that he’s partly responsible for that and fully responsible for Fitz’s injury, but Fitz is thriving now, and he was much quicker to move past old hurts.

  


But now, with Grant’s somewhat more frequent involvement with SHIELD, she feels maybe she should try one more time. She doesn’t want to wait for their weekly game night, so she makes her way to the lab. 

  


It’s almost two, and she’s already been off the base for a grocery run. They were out of ice cream, and Skye finds that unacceptable. So now the freezer is again fully stocked. It had been bright and sunny, always her favorite weather. And then she’d talked with Grant, so all in all, it’s been a good morning, and she’s in a good mood, so it’s probably best she has this conversation now.

  


The lab is busy as ever, and Skye has to dodge a scientist holding a flask of what looks like a bubbling chemical that Skye very much does not want to touch. Jemma’s bent over a microscope, and Fitz isn’t in sight. That’s not great. Skye would have loved to have backup, but oh well. “Hey, Jemma,” she calls out, walking up behind her friend.

  


Jemma looks over her shoulder, “Oh, hello, Skye! How was your mission? Sorry I haven’t been by to ask you about it. We’ve been swamped here.”

  


Skye smiles. Jemma really is the best person for this job. She’s so dedicated. “It’s fine, Jemma,” she chuckles at her friend’s worry, “The mission went great. I’m sure Fitz talked to you about it already, though.”

  


“Yes, he did mention some of it, including someone I disapproved of, but well…” She sighs and pulls off her gloves, turning to face Skye. “I don’t suppose that’s why you’re here, is it?” 

  


Skye flushes and looks away, tugging on her sleeve. She hadn’t expected Jemma to bring it up. “Well, actually-”

  


Jemma waves her hand, dismissing Skye’s words because she already has her answer, “I thought so, and I’ll admit I don’t understand it. And maybe you and Fitz are better people than me-”

  


Skye takes a half step forward, “Jemma, you’re not-”

  


“Just let me get this out, Skye, please.” Skye nods and takes a step back. Jemma sighs and continues, “Maybe you’re both better people than me, but I just can’t forgive him for what he did to us. I’m not saying it will never happen. In our world, I can never predict anything, but I’m not… I can’t forgive him right now. But Fitz and I discussed it, and I see how you talk about him, and I’m not going to try to stop him from helping us or you and Fitz from trusting him. But that’s just… That’s all I can give right now. And it has to be enough.” She exhales like she’s relieved to have gotten it all out.

  


Skye marvels at her friend. “Jemma, that’s more than anyone had a right to expect, and it is enough, for me, for everyone.” She feels tears prick in her eyes, and she can make out matching ones in Jemma’s. Skye steps forward again and holds out her arms. Jemma’s quick to accept her offer, and they stand there in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the lab holding each other.

  


<<<>>>

  


**15 months after Grant Ward becomes a consultant for SHIELD**

  


“Well then, why did you forgive me?” he yells, gesturing with his hands. He’s angry, but she’s angrier.

  


“Hell if I know, Grant! Do you think I wanted to at first? Of course not! You did terrible things to my family! Jemma still hates you, and I don’t blame her!” Something cracks in his mask. He’s been having a harder and harder time maintaining it around her, and she sees the quick flash of pain on his face. And just like that, her anger’s gone, dissipated like smoke in the wind, only traces of grey floating round her head. She sighs and scrubs her face with her hands, trying to avoid the piercing grey of Grant’s eyes. 

  


She’s not even sure how they got here. They’re supposed to be laying low until their contact arrives. Instead, they’re fighting in the meeting place, which thankfully is a rented conference room at a hotel, so there’s some measure of privacy. But their conversation had been teasing and calm, and now they’re here.

  


Her voice drops close to a whisper when she speaks, “I don’t know, Grant. Forgiveness is… I don’t understand it. Some say it’s a choice. Others say it’s not. Or that it’s earned. I don’t know if any of that is true. It just is. And I missed you and realized I’d forgiven you. Does there have to be a why?” 

  


“Maybe not.” She can hear him exhale from where she’s looking at the floor. His pulse slowly finds its way back down to a normal rhythm.

  


“I’m sorry, Grant,” is all she can manage.

  


He shakes his head, “You don’t owe me anything. I just… Maybe I thought you could tell me how to forgive myself.” She makes herself look up at him, and it breaks her heart. All his walls are gone. His eyes are silver instead of grey, and there’s something so broken about it, like he’s finally let everything fall, and it’s just him. Suddenly, she can’t stand the distance between them. Her hand twitches and she feels an ache in her bones, begging her to reach out and touch him, to assure herself that he’s real. But if she does, he might break, might shatter into all the pieces she knows he’s worked so hard to keep together, and all she’ll be left with is grey.

  


But then his hand is reaching out to her. He hesitates, unsure, his hand hanging in the space between them. But she steps forward, so they’re only a foot apart, and his fingers brush a stray hair out of her face before cupping her cheek. His hand is warm, and his thumb is gentle as it caresses her skin. She leans into him as she tilts her head back to meet his eyes. “I’ll be here when you figure it out, Grant.” She’s never been so certain of anything before.

  


He leans down and rests his forehead against hers. She closes her eyes and breathes him in, unworried and content. “I know,” he says, and it’s barely a whisper. And maybe that’s enough for now. He believes she’ll stay, and she means it.

  


<<<>>>

  


**19 months after Grant Ward becomes a consultant for SHIELD**

  


“A few days ago, I got assigned to a mission with this guy Turner that I went on one date with like a year ago, and god, it was so awkward. He kept shooting glances at me on the flight and ugh. That date was not one of my greatest decisions.” She scrubs a hand across her face and groans in annoyance as she walks toward the lounge.

  


“At least he hasn’t tried to kill you, like someone I know,” Grant comments. 

  


Skye rolls her eyes and adjusts the phone against her ear, “You know, you could also be talking about May, so I’m not going to take that personally. Besides, that was for very different reasons, and I’m happy to report I regret shooting you.”

  


He chuckles, “Glad I’m appreciated.” She can’t help smiling too. She’s so glad they’re able to joke about it. 

  


She enters the lounge, ignoring the few agents at the table, walks past them, and grabs a coke out of the fridge before she throws herself down on one of the armchairs on the far side of the room. “What are you even doing right now?”

  


He clicks his tongue in mock disapproval, “That’s top-secret information.” She rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to retort, but he continues, “Besides, aren’t you supposedly the world’s best hacker? I’d have thought you’d have eyes on me right now. I’m disappointed, Skye.”

  


“If I remember right, Grant,” she drags out his name and smirks, “you were the one who complimented my hacking skills when they got us into that Judgement anti-Inhuman base last month.” 

  


She can picture the smile on his face as she pops open the soda with a hiss and takes a sip. “Hmm, I don’t seem to remember that.”

  


“Grant, I don’t have my computer. Please?” 

  


He grumbles, and her smile widens. It’s quiet, but, “Fine, I’m grocery shopping.”

  


She bursts out laughing, ignoring the annoyed looks from the three agents across the room. Between giggles, she gets out, “You mean T1000 actually needs to eat? I don’t believe you.”

  


She can practically hear him roll his eyes in exasperation, but he plays along, “Oh, not for me. It turns out you actually need to feed prisoners. Who knew, right?”

  


A thought suddenly occurs to her, “Are you dressed in all black?” His silence answers her question, and she starts laughing again, “God, Grant, you’re going to scare all the little old ladies, especially with your scowl.”

  


He chuckles, “Actually, they scare me. Have you ever tried to do something when they’re watching? They’re always judging.”She laughs again, and their conversation quickly descends into jokes about old ladies possibly being aliens and her telling him what to buy and other teasing. She can’t seem to stop smiling as she talks to him. 

  


It’s a nice distraction from the loneliness that’s been creeping up on her. SHIELD’s been growing and regaining trust for years, and they’re now mostly recognized worldwide, especially thanks to their international bases. But that means her team is busier than ever. Bobbi and Hunter even left to lead the French base last month temporarily. FitzSimmons have evermore responsibilities as heads of the SHIELD Research and Science Division. Kara is always out on missions, so she’s barely on base with Skye at the same time. And of course, Coulson is Director, so he’s always working or exhausted or both. Even May is rarely sighted on the base. After all, she’s basically the co-director of SHIELD. Skye’s always been a social person, so all in all, she’s been feeling lonely. Grant helps push some of that away.

  


Finally, they say their goodbyes, and she stands, stretching her cramped muscles after an hour on the phone with him, and recycles her soda before heading out of the now-empty lounge towards her room. As she walks, she allows herself to admit she misses him, actually seeing his face when he laughs, the feel of his arms wrapped around her. She’d seen him last month, and three months before that, and of course, she has their almost weekly calls but… She sighs. Maybe she’s fine with this. If she rarely sees FitzSimmons, if Bobbi and Hunter move away permanently, if she only sees Grant three times a year, if she spends most of her free time alone, if she goes on mission after mission until she’s no longer able. Maybe there’s a Skye that could live that life. But she doesn’t want it to be her.

  


She blinks. She hadn’t realized those thoughts were floating in the back of her mind, hadn’t realized she was unsatisfied, but now that she’s thought them, there’s no denying they’re true. It’s not that she’s unhappy; it’s just something is missing. 

  


She laughs out loud, filled with some unknown joy at the realization. She misses her team, her friends, her family. And somehow, Grant’s included in that. If anything, she misses him more. She’ll be damned if she loses any of them.


	18. would you rescue me? would you get my back?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Skye,” he cuts her off. She pauses and then in one swift motion pulls the chain to the light so she can grab for the phone. She presses it closer to her ear: he sounds different now that she’s paying attention. His breathing is uneven as he continues in hushed tones, “Skye, I need you to listen and-” He’s interrupted by a hacking cough she can tell he’s trying to keep quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from rescue me by OneRepublic
> 
> I'm so sorry for the delay. And this is short so I'm also sorry for that. My only excuse is life is rough.
> 
> In other news, we're getting close to the end here I think. But I do want to keep writing these two so hopefully, there'll be more stories even after I finish this one.
> 
> i hope you guys are still reading and enjoying this story after the delay :)

“Skye-” Grant’s voice filters through the phone’s speakers as she brings the phone to her ear. The hallway is unusually busy near Coulson’s office today. She suspects it’s because of the joint mission with the FBI to raid Judgement’s Headquarters tonight. Skye wasn’t assigned to it though, Coulson wanted her to rest after a mission last week where she’d bruised some ribs, so she can’t be sure. She steps into a dark maintenance closet to avoid some of the hectic movement of agents.

“Grant!” She’s been meaning to call him. She holds the phone up to her ear with her shoulder as she fumbles for the hanging chain to the singular light bulb, “There’s some stuff I’ve been wanting to talk to you about-”

“Skye,” he cuts her off. She pauses and then, in one swift motion, pulls the chain to the light so she can grab for the phone. She presses it closer to her ear: he sounds different now that she’s paying attention. His breathing is uneven as he continues in hushed tones, “Skye, I need you to listen and-” He’s interrupted by a hacking cough she can tell he’s trying to keep quiet. 

Her worry instantly skyrockets, “Grant-”

“Listen, Skye,” he hisses “and tell Coulson.” Without any more preamble, “I’m in the largest HYDRA base left in Austria.” Skye wants to yell at him in that moment for whatever stupid thought had given him the idea to go in there alone, but she restrains herself and lets him continue. “I’d gotten intel they were restarting the brainwashing program with some kind of serum to speed up the process, and that they’d made progress with it. SHIELD needs to destroy this base and all info on the program before they can finish it and distribute the data to other HYDRA bases and organizations. Just bomb the whole base if you need to.”

Skye doesn’t think she breathes while he’s speaking, her brain trying to process the info. Suddenly, something catches her attention in all the information he’s just laid out. She tries to keep the anxiety out of her voice but doesn’t know if she’s successful, “What about you?” No response except sharp inhales. “Grant? You’re out of there, right?”

“Skye…” he starts, and she can feel the apology in his voice. She's not going to let him say it.

“No, Grant. Get out of there.” She knows he can hear the emotion in her voice. She doesn’t care.

“I tried my best to destroy it, but Skye… I’m not getting out of here. There are too many of them. All of the exits are blocked, and I had to give you this intel.” She can tell he’s struggling to breathe. He must have already fought his way through agents for enough time to call her. 

She promised herself she wouldn’t let her family slip through her fingers. He doesn’t get to do this to her. “Grant, stop, I’d just gotten used to your stupid face again,” she chuckles wetly, and her throat closes up. He chuckles too, and she can tell it hurts him, but he does it… for her. She wants to punch him... or hug him. She swipes a hand across her cheeks, trying to dry the tears she’d barely noticed tracing their way down her face. She schools her face, “You better sit tight until we find you.” She can hear him open his mouth to spout some self-sacrificing bullshit, and she speaks before he can, “Shut up, Grant. I’ll see you soon, and it better be in one piece.”

For a moment, she thinks he’s going to argue but then, “Will do,” and the line clicks dead. She drops her hand to her side and exhales shakily.

When she emerges from the once again dark closet, her face is the picture of determination and agents part before her, like the sea before Moses, as she storms her way to Coulson’s office, a fire in her dark eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments really help me with motivation so please leave your thoughts!

**Author's Note:**

> If you guys liked it leave a comment. They make my day! Seriously I love reading them so please leave me one cause they motivate me to write more! if you guys have ideas for other stories send me an ask on tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/imadetheline) or just yell about stuff with me. I also have another tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/soithinkicanwrite) for all my writing stuff and one for just skyeward [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/heartisgoldandmyhandsarecold) Thanks guys!


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